Patrick Nevin

Tinker Traveller Activist. All views my own.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

Without Services the legislation is worthless. It’s finger wagging, nothing more.
A pathetic attempt to placate the nation.
An insult to anyone who wants nothing to do with the genocidal regime.

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

This

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

The most important word in imperial media is "allegedly."

Palestinian health officials allege the death toll is 70,000.

Witnesses allege that the strike hit a hospital.

Survivors allege that soldiers committed acts of torture.

Allegedly.

Now watch how "allegedly" disappears when the victims are on the other side.

Hamas attacked. Hamas massacred. Hamas killed.

No "allegedly."

No "according to Israeli sources."

No epistemic caution.

The word "allegedly" is a small word that performs an enormous function.

It quarantines doubt.

It applies uncertainty surgically, to specific claims, made by specific people, specifically the people whose deaths and suffering the powerful would prefer you to hold at arm's length.

It is a one-word editorial policy.

It is a one-word verdict on whose testimony counts.

[Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 @paulmurphy_TD]

"Sinn Féin needs to choose. Are they a left party willing to head up a left government, in which case they should rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, stop scapegoating asylum seekers and take consistently left-wing positions?"

https://t.co/1mZd6LwNpD

[𝑇𝐴𝑆𝑁𝐼𝐼𝑀 𓂆 @7_SEM0_]

تم نسيانه بنجاح.
لن اصمت حتى يعود الإعلام كله يتحدث عنه.
الدكتور حسام أبو صفية.

[KNEECAP @KNEECAPCEOL]

🔥🔥🔥

[Amnesty Ireland @AmnestyIreland]

"Has our Government finally found their backbone? I fear not. The exclusion of services would be betrayal and cowardice. Think again." Stephen Bowen, Executive Director, Amnesty International Ireland

https://t.co/KekL3S4Ydc

[Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 @paulmurphy_TD]

A great result for PBP in Dublin Central. We increased our vote share by 50% with 6.7% first preferences.

Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin's organising against Council rent hikes will continue. People power can beat them.

FF/FG have taken an historic hammering. We need a left government.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

I want to describe the Middle Passage to you.

Not abstractly.

Specifically.

Enslaved people were loaded onto ships in West Africa at a ratio calculated to maximize profit after accounting for expected deaths in transit.

They were chained in holds with roughly eighteen inches of vertical space, unable to sit upright, lying in their own excrement for voyages that lasted between three weeks and three months.

Mortality rates on Middle Passage ships averaged between 10 and 20 percent.

On some voyages, significantly higher.

Historians estimate that between 1.5 and 2 million people died during the crossing, their bodies thrown into the Atlantic.

Those who arrived alive were washed, oiled to appear healthy, and sold on docks while buyers examined their teeth and bodies like livestock.

You described this system as "not necessarily a nightmare" and compared the labor that followed to picking crops in Africa.

I am not going to debate you on the merits of this position.

I am going to ask you to read what I just wrote.

And then I am going to ask you whether the problem is that you don't know this history, or that you know it and have decided it doesn't change your argument.

Because the answer to that question tells us something important.

Not about slavery.

About you.

[Réada Cronin TD 🇮🇪🇵🇸 @ReadaCronin]

Absolutely shameful that FFFGLL voted against sanctioning the terrorist state!

The genocide of Palestinians was not enough for them.

The illegal capturing and detention of Irish citizens was not enough for them.

What will it take for this government to finally stand up to the rogue and genocidal state of Israel?

[KNEECAP @KNEECAPCEOL]

This is what Ben Gvir excitedly posts online for the whole world to see to international activists trying to help Palestinians, imagine the brutally sick things they do to Palestinians that the world ignores.

Israel is a terrorist state.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

ICC-wanted Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are not exceptions: the machinery of apartheid and its crimes runs far deeper than a few ostentatious, unapologetic perpetrators.
May justice come soon.

[Richard Boyd Barrett @RBoydBarrett]

If you are so "appalled and shocked" by the treatment of the flotilla activists why did the government walk into the Dáil after issuing this statement and vote against sanctioning Israel when the same flotilla activists had explicitly called on you to support the sanctions bill?

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

@DanielEstrin No host country can be allowed to weaponize its position against the very institution it hosts. May the UN General Assembly stand firmly behind its core values. If the abuses continue, the UNGA should seriously consider meeting elsewhere, including Geneva.

[Steve Wall @stevethewall]

Here we go, more words of deep concern while yesterday evening 77 members of this gov voted against sanctioning Israel for their crimes against humanity. We do what the US tells us while Spain refuses. It’s business as usual with genocide. Shame on these TD’s. Names to follow.

[Steve Wall @stevethewall]

The shameful politicians who voted against this will be on the public record. Share their names and photos and remember them when they need votes. They are complicit in aiding a genocidal regime. That’s what they’ll be remembered for.

[Lynn Boylan 🍷📖🐾 @LNBDublin]

The woman in this video is Caitriona Graham an Irish citizen.
Kidnapped in international waters, abused, beaten, put in stress position by Israel. A rogue state that Ireland sent €20m in dual use tech to in 2024 alone. @MichealMartinTD grow a spine.

[Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 @paulmurphy_TD]

Absolute height of cynicism...

Literally including their social media clip in the pre-prepared speech, while refusing to implement the Occupied Territories Bill, our Sanction Israel Bill, or take ANY meaningful action against the genocide.

It's all words, no action.

[Ciaran Tierney @ciarantierney]

MISSING:

A young #Galway student has been kidnapped by armed terrorists in international waters.

Powerful image of Louise McCormack circulating at the @uniofgalway today.

@ipsc48