Socialists, Republicans and Communists have been meeting together under the auspices of the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, on the distressing issue of the torture of Palestinian political prisoners, held as hostages by the Zionists in Israeli jails. The fifth conference was held in Dublin’s Teachers Club on Sunday 25th May 2025, again focusing on the plight of Palestinian and Irish political prisoners.
All speakers were clear on the cause of the Palestinian genocide and its origins. It is inescapable that the British, as they did in Ireland and elsewhere, “gifted” Palestine to the Israelis. This was started via the Balfour declaration in 1914. And implemented by the the UN after the end of the so-called British Mandate (read “occupation”) in 1948. This declared the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories. The Nakba, the expelling of almost a million Palestinians from their land, began in 1947 and continues at the time of writing. Since then the Zionists have created a colonised, apartheid state in Palestine.
As Dr Saeb Shaat, the Palestine-born activist, put it, Ireland knows all about such occupation, colonialism and apartheid, by imperialism. And it knows about torture, imprisonment and killings, and therefore there is a close affinity and understanding with the Palestinian struggle. That has been a constant theme at all five conferences.
In fact, Dr Saeb pointed out that the “Black and Tans” from the 1920’s Irish war, who wreaked havoc on the people of Ireland, then went to Palestine, under the guise of the Palestine Police, and did the same to the Palestinian people. The common denominators? Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, racism, power and greed.
The Palestinian prisoners are the hostages of all of the above. And that is the clear indicator of the direction of travel for this Palestinian Prisoners campaign. The deeper question always is: why have there ever been political prisoners in Ireland or Palestine? Why have the US, Western Europe and the Arab world, in the main, either fully supported the genocide or simply ignored the genocide? These are the relevant questions raised and discussed at every conference.
It is understood that we cannot be just “sympathetic voices” against the horrific torture – physically, sexually and psychologically – of the Palestinian political hostages, held in Israeli jails. It has to be more than that. Emotion will not be enough to defeat the cause of the Zionist genocide and its prisons and torture machines, nor to defeat imperialism anywhere in the world.
So, we understand that the campaign for the Palestinian Prisoners is political. That means that our work in public and our actions must be guided by the underlying causes: imperialism, capitalism, Zionism.
At every conference we have held, an update on the genocide in Palestine and the genocidal torture of Palestinian prisoners has been brought to us by teleconference with an update from the Palestinian Prisoners Support Group in the West Bank. The reports are harrowing, to say the least.
The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum is clear that while the genocide on the ground in Palestine for now 70+ years is what gets the main coverage, the 10,000 Palestinian political hostages, thousands of whom have been just interned without trial – men, women and children – equally need to be heard.
But what is vital is that we politicise all of our work, so that it becomes an awareness raising tool, so that the wider population in Ireland and around the world realise what causes genocidal wars and political prisoners.
The genocide and the detaining of prisoners in Palestine will, one way or another, come to an end. But imperialism, capitalism, along with their abuse of power will not. They will not just wither away. This will require a Revolution: that has to be our ultimate focus.
