The newly re-elected Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil coalition, backed up by several independents, has already commenced its victory lap, reaffirming its support for Israel and Western imperialism.
While the Irish government have tended to portray themselves as defenders of Palestine on the international stage, they have refused to stop US war planes using Shannon airport to fly weapons to Israel, enact the Occupied Territories Bill or close the Israeli embassy before Israel did it themselves.
Despite having only just taken office, the new government has already announced several measures to even further increase their support for Israel.
Last month, Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced that the Irish government would be endorsing the definition of antisemitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental organisation made up mainly of Western governments.
The definition gives several examples of antisemitism, including “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. Is the IDF soldier who said that he “felt like a Nazi” in Gaza (during the First Intifada) and that ‘it looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and they [Palestinians] were the Jews’ an antisemite?
It is obvious to anyone who has seen the photos and videos coming out of Gaza since Israel’s genocide began that comparisons between Nazism and Zionism are extremely apt.
Such a definition of antisemitism is obviously not actually intended to stop bigotry towards Jewish people, but to smear those in solidarity with Palestine as ‘antisemites’. Although the governments adoption of the IHRA’s definition is legally non-binding, it is yet another example of the Free States commitment to combatting Palestinian activism and upholding Zionism.
Martin also declared his intention to scrap the Occupied Territories Bill and replace it with a new piece of legislation. Although he did not go into specifics, he said that “virtually every section of that Bill will have to be amended”.
The bill, which bans trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, was introduced in 2018 and passed by both the Dáil and the Seanad but has yet to be implemented by the Irish government. In 2019 Fine Gael Minister of Finance Paschal Donohoe promised his Israeli counterpart that the Irish government would block the bill in a secret phone call.
The legislation that will replace the Occupied Territories Bill will undoubtedly be watered down, probably allowing for continued trade with West Bank settlements. The bill represents the bare minimum amount of solidarity with Palestine, allowing for unrestricted trade with Israel itself, yet even this proves to be too much for the imperialist Irish bourgeoisie.
While the overwhelming support of the Irish people for the Palestinian cause has forced the southern government to pay lip service to the suffering of the Palestinians, their deeds have shown that they stand firmly with Israel and Western imperialism.
In 2023 Irish firms exported over 70 million worth of dual-use technology – technology which can be used for both civilian and military purposes – to Israel. The support of the Irish bourgeoisie for Israel also helps further integrate them into the US-EU-NATO imperialist alliance by demonstrating that they too can be serious partners in imperialism.
In the face of the enormous profits and strategic benefits to be gained by the Irish bourgeois in supporting Israel, genocide is a trivial matter. A real movement for Palestine can only be driven by the Irish working class.