Israel Will Be Forever Stained by the Blood of Gaza

John McDonagh (JM) and Sandy Boyer (SB) interview former Mid-Ulster MP Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey (BDM) via telephone from Coalisland, Co.Tyrone about protests in Ireland over the War on Gaza.


Radio Free Éireann
WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
26 July 2014

(begins time stamp 37:25)


SB: And now we're going to Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, to speak to Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey. Bernadette, it's good to have you back on Radio Free Éireann.

BDM: Hi! Good to talk to you again but we could be talking under better circumstances as usual. 
SB: Well, yes. But, you're just back from a protest in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone for Gaza. Why did you feel it was so important to go out today?

BDM: This is in fact the third demonstration in less than a week in the Dungannon area and the anger and the despair about Gaza is palpable right across Ireland - and I think you heard George Galloway there in the House of Commons - across Britain as well.

Particularly here - it defies any understanding of humanity that people can see with modern technology: They can see from video footage on cell phones. They can see the very, very highly esteemed broadcaster, John Snow who went to Gaza, almost at an emotional breaking point because of what he was seeing.

And then find the United States continuing to hold up a Zionist, fascist regime that denies the suffering of the Jewish population at the hands of fascists in the 30's. To look at the European Union and the countries of Europe which stood back and watched Jewish people go to the gas chambers now stand back and watch the Zionist offspring of those victims turned perpetrator and torture the children of Palestine and do nothing about it.

And here in Ireland, where more than anybody else, we understand from living, historic experience, oppression and repression and slaughter because we wanted nothing more than to live in peace and dignity in land that belonged to us. And to watch the Irish government, who very recently acquired permanent status at the
United Nations, use their very first vote on a human rights issue to have nothing to say! - for fear of offending America - for fear of offending the European Union - to which it in now hock in the European banks.

And because our foreign minister, after the vote has been outed as a member of that disgraceful organisation, the Friends of Israel, which he had not declared and may yet hopefully cause his resignation, that anger has taken people onto the streets in towns and villages and cities across Ireland.

And I think there must have been probably today across Ireland at least thirty demonstrations - big ones in Belfast - almost a thousand people went to the US Consulate - some five-six thousand people marched on the Israeli Embassy demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. Consistently in Doire, Tralee, Cork - in all of the cities - there have been demonstrations of thousands of people.

And now in the rural towns and villages, people who can't get to the cities, are organising demonstrations at which hundreds and hundreds are turning out. In Dungannon and Coalisland today you can see Palestinian flags flying in homes who understand what it is like to lose people in war.

And something that people in America might want to think: The population of Gaza is very little more than the population of Northern Ireland. But the people are living in a strip of land that barely runs the length of the side of Lough Neagh. And the number of people killed in less than three weeks and injured in Gaza in less than three weeks, Sandy, is more, more than we lost in thirty years! How can people watch it and not condemn the State of Israel for the inhumanity and war crimes they have committed?

SB: Bernadette, as you say, I mean this is not ... usually you get these protests – there's a demonstration in Belfast, there's a demonstration in Dublin, maybe Doire - this is all over the country.

BDM: This is all over the country and this is not organisations. The first demonstration the other night in Dungannon was organised by a woman, a woman Dymphna Witt, an ordinary, local person living in the village of Stewartstown, who sent out a Facebook invitation to say: I can't watch it anymore. Please – somebody join me on the street. All over the walls are printed: “Pray for Gaza”.

And the people who were on that demonstration and the people who are out again today are plain people - there are families - there are children - demonstration today had children - mums with children in buggies – this has not just touched the heart but breaking the heart of people here.

And I'm not sure if people in Israel understand how any credibility, any sympathy, any understanding of an Israeli perspective of defending their nation or whatever it is they think they're doing has been destroyed.

I don't think people, I hope they do, but I don't think that people really, really “get” it because they may not be getting all the information in the United States. Israel will never recover from these last nineteen days. It will forever be stained.

SB: And Bernadette, there seems to be demonstrations in Belfast almost every day...

BDM: ...Every day. Every day. We've had the trade unions out.

There was a large demonstration at the hospital – the hospital workers came out last week in solidarity with the hospital workers in Gaza. We've had grannies come out – we've had Grannies for Gaza as I said we've had families, there are people...

I haven't seen anything like from fear and despair at the time of the prison protests here brought ordinary people.

I'll give you one example: Today in Dungannon, I saw Sinn Féin, people from Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin elected representatives, people from the dissident Republicans, people from the SDLP, people from no politics at all, all standing together called into the street by a woman who couldn't watch it any longer who didn't belong to any of them.

SB: And Bernadette, certainly in The North in almost every Nationalist community people are flying the Palestinian flag. Unfortunately, in the Loyalist communities people are flying the Israeli flag...

BDM: Yep.

SB: ... an instinctive identification.

BDM: Well, part of that is just typical Loyalist sectarianism because the palpable mobilisation around Gaza and the appearance of the Palestinian flag, again in the Nationalist communities, they then oppose it so that puts them on the Israeli side without thinking.

Part of it is the same affiliation, historic affiliation, of people who usurped other peoples' rights to assert their own. And some of the things that have been said – for example - at the demonstration today in Belfast some of the Loyalist, pro-Israeli supporters were celebrating one thousand dead in Gaza and saying: Let's make it fifteen hundred before next week. It's the kind of dehumanising, brutalisation that that kind of affiliation creates.

But that is very small and confined to the very, very narrow Loyalists groupings. There is no sense amongst the broad Protestant population of any support for Israel.

SB: And Bernadette, this is taking me back because I was involved in the anti-apartheid movement here, to the anti-apartheid movement, and I find it very interesting that people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Council of Churches, are calling for sanctions against Israel.

BDM: There have to be sanctions, Sandy. There have to be. In fact, at the first meeting in Dungannon, John Hurson, who has organised a number of convoys of humanitarian aid from Tyrone to Gaza, actually said we need to contact our friends in America who set up the McBride Principles for us and tell them they have to start to get America dis-investing in Israel. They have to break the Zionist hold on the conscience of the American people.

SB: And that's one of the things we try to do here on WBAI, which we are unfortunately in fund raising ...

BDM: ... and again, where would we be without you?

SB: But Bernadette, you said this has really gone down to the ordinary people like nothing else has I can't remember ... people in places like Athlone and Blanchardstown, Carrick-on-Suir and Tramore...

BDM: ...Everywhere, everywhere...

SB: ...This is not your usual...

BDM: ... No, no. This is a groundswell of fundamental humanity, Sandy. People are watching. You know, you have this State of Israel which has Absolute and total protection courtesy of its American allies. It has its technological dome of protection. It doesn't matter if Hamas fired a million rockets at them, whether any of them land anywhere in Israel is totally at the discretion of the Israeli authorities controlling that shield. And they admitted that!

When one of the Hamas rockets fell within a mile of their airport, the Ben Gurion Airport, and the security guy speaking on British television said: This is was a totally secure place – it was a totally safe place for people to fly into because the dome was totally secure except when, for human error - because they let some of them through - they had determined quite rightly that that one wasn't going anywhere near the airport and it didn't seem to be going anywhere else - but unfortunately it fell on somebody's house. So he admitted on public television that the capacity of Israel is that it doesn't matter who fires rockets at them, none of them land in Israel. None of them actually reach the ground – they dissolve them - unless they think they're harmless and they let them drop ...

SB: ... Bernadette, thank you very much ...

BDM: ... Now you put that against one thousand people dead and almost seven thousand people injured. That's a war crime.

SB: It is a war crime. Thank you for coming on and we look forward to talking to you again.

BDM: Thank you, Sandy, thank you again and thanks to WBAI for keeping humanity alive.

SB: So that was Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey talking about WBAI - “keeping humanity alive”.

(ends time stamp 50:30)

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