The outrage being expressed by the Government and the minister for foreign affairs is all hot air and downright hypocritical, as is the blustering by the European Union, in regard to the Ryanair flight being forced to land in Belarus and the arrest of Roman Protasevich, a passenger on that Ryanair flight.
Nothing about Belarus can be separated from the aggressive political and military strategy of both the European Union and NATO towards that country and towards Russia. The attitude and the role of the Irish government is no surprise but reflects its active and growing participation in EU and NATO military co-operation. The Irish establishment has long since abandoned military neutrality while still paying lip service to it.
The hypocrisy of both the Irish establishment and the EU bureaucracy knows no bounds. Their position it one of “do as we say, not as we do.” A further example of the EU and NATO’s doublespeak and hypocrisy was the forced rerouting of the Bolivian president’s plane on 1 July 2013, rerouted by the Austrian air force and then searched, because they thought Edward Snowden was on board. Millions of people have marched and demonstrated demanding sanctions against Israel for its illegal wars against the Palestinian people, wars that have resulted in the death of thousands of Palestinians, maiming hundreds of thousands of children, women, and men, and its criminal assassination of political opponents outside its own borders. It has restricted the capacity of the Palestinian people to gain access to vaccines and other medicines to fight the Covid pandemic and other diseases.
Israel has bombed schools, hospitals and media offices and destroyed tens of thousands of people’s homes.
Zionist settlers have illegally seized Palestinian farmers’ land and stolen their water supplies. Not one sanction has been imposed by the EU or any NATO country, while the Irish state and establishment have opposed the Occupied Territories Bill. Not one bomb or bullet has been stopped going to the Israeli occupation army. The EU and NATO countries continue to arm the Zionist state. They issue weasel words of “concern” but do nothing. Clearly they value white European lives and the need to secure and advance their own imperialist interests before the needs, the aspirations and the lives of Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. Their interests are far more important than the suffering of millions of Palestinians. They demand that Palestinians suffer in silence while they continue to support their oppressors.
We need to step up our opposition to the use of Shannon Warport, along with the following demands:
• Oppose our involvement in PESCO
• Redirect all military spending to social needs, such as building public housing
• End all co-operation with NATO
• Enshrine neutrality in the Constitution