Lessons from Irish freedom struggle for Palestine—interview with Richard Boyd Barrett

Richard Boyd Barrett

What’s been the impact of the movement in the last year?

The last year has been absolutely momentous in exposing the brutal reality of Israel and the Zionist project—and what that project has done to the Palestinian people.

There seems to be no limit to the horror, no boundaries for the atrocities that Israel is willing to commit against the Palestinians. In the early 21st century—after previous genocides, we are here again. A genocide is being committed so blatantly in front of the world. It’s the ongoing Nakba taken to its horrific conclusion—with what we’ve seen in Gaza and now extending into Lebanon.

The Israeli government has a very clear desire to escalate this into a full scale regional conflict.

But we have an awareness among millions more people that this horror is being enabled by the United States, Britain and the big Western powers in Europe. That has been a shocking realisation for many people.

I think there are many on the left who have been saying these things for a long time. The Palestinians have been saying, ‘This is the nature of Israel—it’s an apartheid state with a genocidal logic.’ But that has now been witnessed live in front of the world and has opened the eyes of millions of people across the world.

We were a minority in arguing that this state had apartheid, genocide and oppression written into its DNA.

Talking of trying to negotiate with this state—or that there’s the possibility of co-existence of a Palestinian state with the Zionist project—was never possible. But I think that has become evident to many more people even though their own governments give Israel the arms and impunity to continue their crimes.

Ireland has a long history of resistance to imperialism. What are the parallels with and lessons for the Palestinian struggle for liberation?

The lessons from the Irish fight for freedom and the struggle against South African apartheid are important to the struggle for Palestinian liberation.  

In Ireland, there was a domestic resistance against oppression as there has been throughout Palestinian history.

But the moment of breakthrough in the Irish Revolution from 1919 to 1923 coincided with huge international events—great upheavals, revolts and revolutions that challenged imperialism and capitalism.

It’s no coincidence that the Irish Revolution, which liberated part of Ireland, happened at a time when revolution spread across Europe and the world. Nor is it a coincidence that there were advances for the fight against colonialism when there were big upheavals at the end of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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Similarly, in South Africa the internal resistance of black South Africans combined with a huge international movement of solidarity. These were the factors that eventually led to the downfall of apartheid.

So, in the Palestinian struggle, the question of regional revolt against regimes that have collaborated with the United States and the Western powers is critical.

There are serious challenges inside the US and Europe to the governments that continue to arm and support Israel. These will be a critical part of the process of winning liberation.

What is the role of movements in the US and Europe?

We have to bring the case for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions into every corner of society. Alongside the mass mobilisations, we have to deepen the roots of that movement into schools, colleges and workplaces.

Workers have the power to cut Israel off from the means it uses to oppress the Palestinians.

I’m always keen to cite the Dunnes Stores shop workers’ strike in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in 1984.

You had shop workers in Dublin going on strike in support of the boycott movement. Nelson Mandela famously said it was when he saw white workers going on strike in Dublin that he knew the anti-apartheid movement was going to win.

Governments in the West are either openly complicit or two-faced, mouthing sympathy for the Palestinians while giving Israel the impunity it needs to carry on. So, we have to look to workers to enforce that boycott, to demand the breaking of all links with the Israeli terrorist regime.

We have to have a “let a thousand flowers bloom approach” and encourage initiative. I’ve never witnessed the level of Palestine solidarity that I can see now in Ireland. And Ireland has always been pretty supportive in Palestine, but it’s reached extraordinary levels.

In Britain it’s very clear that the money that’s going to the military machine should be going on housing, health and education. Global arms spending is at staggering levels—and the vast majority is being spent by Nato-aligned countries.

In Ireland, we’re emphasising the role of our own government, which is trying to pull us closer to Nato and increase arms spending.

The European Union (EU), at the best of Nato, is trying to ratchet up the proportion of GDP that is being spent on the military. That’s a connection we need to make.

What has the movement in Ireland achieved?

From the outset, we have called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. We want to see all diplomatic links with this state broken.

The Irish government hasn’t agreed to that—but the Israeli ambassador has actually left and not come back. That’s because the Irish government was forced, because of the scale of protests, to recognise the Palestinian state.

A long-standing demand in the movement was to scrap the EU-Israel trade agreement, which gives Israel access to European markets. If that deal was scrapped, that would cut off a vital lifeline to the apartheid state. And because of the movement on the streets here the Irish government is now articulating that demand.

We’ll have a bigger challenge to get the big states to agree with that—but that agreement’s legitimacy has become a serious discussion.

We’ve also had victories in the universities and colleges, where they’ve been forced to break off links with Israeli institutions.