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offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

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Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

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Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Wed Sep 10, 2025 00:47 | Toby Young
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
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offsite link What Has Gone Wrong With Books About How-Everything-Has-Gone-Wrong-and-What-To-Do-About-It And What ... Tue Sep 09, 2025 17:48 | James Alexander
Ben Ansell, in Why Politics Fails, outlines "five traps of the modern world and how to escape them". Professor James Alexander wonders how he can escape yet another book that tries to save the world with Left-wing dogma.
The post What Has Gone Wrong With Books About How-Everything-Has-Gone-Wro... And What To Do About Them appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The African Countries Demanding Reparations Are Astonishingly Hypocritical Tue Sep 09, 2025 15:46 | Will Jones
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The post The African Countries Demanding Reparations Are Astonishingly Hypocritical appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Brighton Council Ignores Van With Palestine Flag for Months ? But Tows it Days After St George?s Fla... Tue Sep 09, 2025 13:04 | Will Jones
Brighton Council has been accused of "two-tier" hypocrisy after ignoring a van with a Palestine flag for months only to tow it days after a St George's flag was added.
The post Brighton Council Ignores Van With Palestine Flag for Months ? But Tows it Days After St George’s Flag Added appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

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End Game in Gaza?

category international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis author Tuesday August 26, 2014 00:29author by Billy Fitzpatrick - I am former president of TUI (now retired). TUI supports call for BDS against Israel.author address Ashfield Park, Terenure, Dublin 6Wauthor phone 0872646484 Report this post to the editors

Israel's colonial project in Palestine is, in fact, old-style European.
Sad that Ireland, with its anti-colonial history, should today hide behind the old bully-boys of Europe.
Respect: the success of Gaza's meagrely - armed resistance as it sees Israel again reverting to attacks from distance.

For a while it seemed we were witnessing the end game of what has been called the last, ‘old style’ colonial project in modern history – the displacement and removal of an entire people from their homes and ancestral lands, by an overwhelming force of new arrivals. An upbeat Moshe Feiglin, the Knesset’s deputy speaker supplied the details on ‘Israel National News’: ‘maximum force’, he said, would be used to eliminate all resistance in Gaza, following which all surviving Palestinians would be encouraged to leave ‘for Sinai’ (the desert). Gaza would then ‘become part of sovereign Israel and be populated by Jews – this will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel’, he said.

Though this looks, on the surface, like a straight lift from Mein Kampf and other tracts outlining the Nazi Lebensraum (‘Living Space’) plan, this is not quite so. Lebensraum envisaged confrontation with modern armies of various strengths and resources, a striking departure from the European tradition, and an aberration which inevitably doomed the project.

The Greater Israel plan (formally incorporating the Palestinian territories, in its initial phase) is, in fact, more traditional and old-style European, in that the natives are first rendered defenceless before final clearances are effected. This would be in line with the fates visited upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand and, indeed, with the ‘To hell or to Connacht’ chapter in our own country.

It is no surprise, then, that the EU group is maintaining a ‘stiff upper lip’ in support of the colonising power – despite the on-going level and nature of Israel's atrocities. The sad thing from an Irish point of view is that a country, with a reputation for having spearheaded the anti-colonial drive of the last century and subsequently pursued a constructive and independent foreign policy, should continue to hide so abjectly behind the backs of the old bully boys of Europe.

The high casualty rates suffered by its ground forces sees Israel again attacking from distance as it concentrates on high-rise residential buildings and other ‘soft’ targets – indiscriminate and bloody, but not so effective militarily. For the moment at least, it appears that Moshe Feiglin’s dream has been thwarted – by the incredible resilience of a tormented people, living for a long time on the verge of extinction, the meagre hand-held arms of their resistance recalling the blowpipes of an earlier era.

Billy Fitzpatrick

Related Link: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/96921?author_name=ed&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true
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