Category Archives: Hamas

I have to set this out at the start of this post. None of this has been investigated by me, it has all been done by other journalists. However all of this has been verified by me. All the relevant links are included in the post. It is also noteworthy to mention that I don’t have a vote in the general elections in Ireland and I am therefor not affiliated to any political party.

Some of the articles are a few years old, but are still relevant

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sinn-feins-troubling-solidarity-with-palestinians/

Black Mountain, which looms above West Belfast, acts as a blank canvas for Irish republicans to plaster their thoughts across. Over the years, banners covering a range of subjects, from Irish unity to Brexit, have been draped across it. In recent days, a Palestinian flag was placed there by a group styling itself Gael Force Art, claiming it was in ‘solidarity with the Palestinian people who launched their biggest operation in fifty years against the rogue state of Israel’. Gerry Adams shared a picture of the flag on Twitter/ X. ‘The Mountain Speaks! Free Palestine,’ he wrote.

Irish republicanism has always been a reliable well-spring of support for their Palestinian equivalents. In the Troubles, PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) sympathetic graffiti would occasionally jockey for attention with similar pledges of support for the Basque terrorists ETA on the walls of the Falls Road. In recent years, messages of support for Hamas have appeared alongside so-called street art supporting dissident republican terrorists.

For some Irish republicans, their cause has much in common with that of the Palestinians. They see themselves as kindred spirits in the global battle against the forces of ‘imperialism’. It’s all about vibes and being on the alleged right side of history. In an example of this superficiality, in Glasgow, a group of self-described anti-fascist Celtic supporters called the Green Brigade, taking a break from their usual veneration of the IRA, hoisted Palestinian flags and a banner proclaiming ‘victory to the resistance’ on Saturday afternoon. No ambulance is left unpursued in the quest to be viewed as right on.

But the shameful truth is that banners like these were being bandied around while acts of unspeakable violence were taking place. A music festival was being turned into a massacre; children were being butchered in their beds in a kibbutz. Such displays fit into a wider pattern of demented behaviour by parts of the Western left, undertaken at a comfortable distance from the horrors of southern Israel. However, in the case of Irish republicanism, it was not limited to the extreme fringes.Plenty of Sinn Fein representatives – from TDs in the south to Martina Anderson, the former IRA prisoner – were putting out performative displays of ‘solidarity’ with the Palestinian cause on social media while footage of Hamas’s barbarism was already circulating. The party’s youth wing also got in on the act, plastering their Twitter/X profile with Palestinian-style graphics. Little wonder Israeli sources have described the party as the most outwardly anti-Israeli in western Europe.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/ira-plo-cooperation-a-long-cozy-relationship

Israel is continually delegitimized and demonized in Republican demonstrations and publications.

Gerry Adams’ decision to meet with Hamas during his visit to the region this week will come as little surprise to those familiar with the history of Irish Republicanism’s cozy relationship with Middle East terrorism. This began in the early 1970s when Muammar Gaddafi’s then-terror-sponsoring regime began supplying the IRA with the financial, military and logistical assistance it required to prosecute its brutal anti-British offensive. Four Libyan arms shipments in the mid-1980s (when Adams, despite his increasingly absurd denials, sat on the IRA’s ruling Army Council) proved particularly devastating, reinvigorating its floundering military campaign; a fifth, the Eksund, was intercepted by the French navy in October 1987. By this time, contacts had been established with Hizbullah which led, intelligence sources believe, to the development of new tactics such as the “diversionary” mine attacks used with deadly effect in south Lebanon and Northern Ireland, most notoriously at Warrenpoint, County Down in 1979 where 15 British soldiers were killed. More recently, Britain has claimed that IRA-developed bomb-making technology passed on to Hizbullah has been used against its forces in Iraq. But the most enduring regional relationship forged by the Republican movement was that with the PLO. This too dated from the early 1970s, when Fatah organized arms and terrorist training for IRA and INLA operatives in Libya and Lebanon. And while Yasser Arafat attempted to distance himself from the IRA after Lord Louis Mountbatten’s murder in 1979 (although a senior IRA defector has claimed the PLO was involved in financing the attack in which two teenage boys and an 82-year-old woman were also slaughtered), IRA-PLO cooperation continued well into the 1990s. Concerns that it persisted even after the signing of the Belfast Agreement were behind the investigation by British and Israeli security services of the possibility that the IRA either trained or actually provided the sniper who killed 10 IDF soldiers with an obsolete bolt-action rifle near Ofra in March 2002. The discovery by Paul Collinson, a British explosives expert working with the Palestinian Red Crescent, of 200 “exact replicas” of IRA-issue pipe bombs in Jenin after Operation Defensive Shield aroused further suspicions of continuing paramilitary links. HOWEVER, MAINSTREAM Republican support for the Palestinians has been purely political since the official end of the IRA’s war in 2005. Although he presides over a Sinn Fein which remains bitterly hostile to what it once termed “the obnoxious phenomenon that is Zionism,” Adams, as an international peacemaker manqué, personally adopts a relatively moderate tone, leaving it to his international affairs spokesman, Aengus O’Snodaigh, to articulate the party’s official positions. For example, in June 2006, O’Snodaigh described Israel as “without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet.” Two months later he claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the result of “continued Israeli aggression, expansion and occupation in the region” and called for UNIFIL’s deployment on the Israeli side of the Blue Line. During Operation Cast Lead he demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland and compared him to Josef Goebbels. Sinn Fein repeatedly calls for the suspension of the EU’s preferential trading agreement with the Israeli “rogue state” on the grounds of its “horrific crimes against humanity” and, in February, Adams himself launched the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ “Israel/Palestine Report” in Northern Ireland’s parliament buildings, which calls for an economic, political and cultural boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign against Israel. Republicans are also prominently involved in non-party anti-Israel activism, particularly in the Belfast branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, where Sinn Fein cadres work alongside convicted IRA terrorists and members of dissident groups such as Eirigi. THE STRIDENCY of Irish Republicanism’s anti-Israel campaign has, unsurprisingly, given rise to accusations of anti-Semitism. Certainly, the movement is tainted with an anti-Semitic past. Arthur Griffith, who founded the original Sinn Fein movement in 1905, used the pages of his newspaper to rail against “Jew Swindledom” (9/10ths of all Jews were, he proclaimed, “usurers and parasites”) and the Dreyfusards. While similar prejudices were commonplace in all the political parties which descended from his organization, only the eponymous rump which remained after the splits of 1921 and 1926 habitually preached Jew-hatred, culminating in a demand for an Irish-German alliance in 1939. The “new” IRA, itself soaked in anti-Semitism, took a similar view and attempted to forge a working relationship with the Germans. The death of its leader, Sean Russell, on a U-boat bound for Ireland on a mission sanctioned by Ribbentrop was an early blow to its hopes; he was buried at sea with full military honors, his body wrapped in a Nazi flag (Republicans still hold an annual commemoration service for him which senior Sinn Fein members have regularly addressed). That later efforts came to nothing was due, not to any lack of will on the IRA’s part, but to the chaotic state of the organization and the success of Irish intelligence in quelling subversion. In the post-war period, anti-Jewish concerns continued to shape the worldview of many in the Republican movement. Its official newspaper, the United Irishman attacked “Jewish finance,” “Judaeo-Masonic news agencies” and the Jews themselves as “the bitter enemies of Christianity,” this at a time when the IRA itself was being denounced by Ireland’s leading anti-Semitic ideologue, Fr. Denis Fahey, as part of a Jewish-Communist International bent on bringing Ireland under the control of “Moscow or Jerusalem.” However, such criticisms did little to dull his influence on generally left-wing Republicans, whose own anti-Semitism stemmed from a belief in a Jewish-capitalist plot to take over the country. Some, most notably the Republican icon Sean South, joined Fahey’s viciously anti-Semitic Maria Duce movement and became active in the 1950s in warning against such dangerous agents of the World Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy as Larry Adler and Danny Kaye! Such overt anti-Semitism has not been a feature of Irish Republicanism since the movement regrouped in the late 1960s, but the frequency with which its anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line of legitimate criticism leaves the impression that attitudes, at least among some, have not changed much. Graffiti supporting suicide bombers and officially sanctioned murals glorifying Palestinian terrorism (“IRA/PLO – One Struggle,” “Gerry Arafat”) were commonplace in Republican areas during the worst days of the second intifada, giving the Palestinian flags, ubiquitous in Republican areas, a more sinister complexion.

One prominent Republican even suggested that decommissioned IRA weapons be given to the PLO for use against Israel. Israel is continually delegitimized and demonized at Republican demonstrations and in publications such as Sinn Fein’s official weekly, An Phoblacht, and the on-line journal, The Blanket where Nazi analogies have been routinely employed (“Hitler speaking Hebrew”, “the Julius Streicher-type tyrant” Ariel Sharon). Anti-Semitic undertones in their whispering campaign against former Northern Ireland minister Peter Mandelson have also been cited as evidence that there may be more to all of this than anti-Zionism. Nevertheless the Irish Republican movement can no longer be fairly described as anti-Semitic per se. Yet neither can a century-old undercurrent be lightly discounted. One way or another, this much is clear – in a century of all-consuming struggle against Britain, it has always found time to castigate the Jews.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30077281.html

Sinn Fein’s administration chief at Stormont headed the IRA’s intelligence unit, establishing links with ETA, the PLO and other worldwide terrorist groups, a court heard today.

Denis Donaldson, 52, was also invited to the wedding of a chef wanted for questioning in connection with the seizure of informants’ files during a raid on Special Branch offices in Belfast earlier this year, it was claimed.

A senior detective opposing a bail application by Donaldson told the Northern Ireland High Court police feared he would continue spying for the IRA if he was freed.

Superintendent Roy Suitters said: “There is a serious risk he may not turn up for trial.

“He has travelled widely throughout the world establishing links with other groups and organisations.”

But defence lawyer Seamus Treacey QC insisted there was no evidence linking his client to a terror network.

Donaldson, of Aitnamona Crescent, West Belfast, was one of four people arrested last month by police probing an alleged IRA espionage plot inside the British government’s main buildings at Stormont where former Secretary of State John Reid had his office.

A rucksack discovered at Donaldson’s home contained 1,218 pages of documentation, with about 700 believed to have come from the Northern Ireland Office, the court heard.

Among the papers recovered were top-secret letters to and from the Taoiseach, the British Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, the Ministry of Defence, Police Ombudsman and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

One also related to Colombia, where three republicans are due to stand trial early next month accused of training with Farc guerrillas.

Correspondence to David Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party and the nationalist SDLP was also discovered, it was claimed.

The detective told the court Donaldson was among a tight-knit group of no more than six people with access to classified documents still believed to be missing.

Mr Suitters added that Special Branch had briefed him that he was a senior member of the IRA’s intelligence wing.

A crown lawyer said Donaldson was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in February 1972 after being found guilty of a plot to bomb a distillery and undisclosed British government buildings.

During the 1980s it was alleged the Sinn Fein administrator toured Europe giving talks on the IRA’s H-Block hunger strike campaign inside the Maze Prison.

In August 1981 he was arrested at Orly Airport in Paris after arriving from Beirut on a false passport, the QC said.

Claiming Donaldson had forged close links with other terrorists, he added: “He has connections with groups and organisations in Madrid, Beirut, El Salvador and Italy.”

During the early 1990s it was alleged the Sinn Fein man travelled extensively in the United States campaigning on behalf of Noraid, the IRA’s fund-raising operation in America.

With senior detectives now linking the raid on a suspected intelligence gathering operation at Stormont to the break-in at Castlereagh police complex on St Patrick’s Night in March this year – also blamed on the IRA – the court was told of Donaldson’s alleged links to a man wanted in connection with that raid.

An application seeking the extradition of Larry Zaitschek, a former chef at the barracks, from the US is with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It was claimed an invitation to Zaitschek’s wedding and a photo of Donaldson with the cook was found by police during searches of the republican’s home.

The bail application hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1473&context=honorstheses

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/the-close-links-between-sinn-fein-and-ira-untangled-1.4179896

Hamas chief warned of violence at Sinn Féin webinar

A senior figure from the terrorist group Hamas, speaking at a Sinn Féin event, warned that Israel would provoke ‘a new round of violence’ by pursing further annexations of Palestine.

The militant Palestinian group, which mounted the attack on Israel that killed more than 700 people at the weekend, has been deemed a terror organisation by the European Union since 2001.

A senior figure from the terrorist group Hamas, speaking at a Sinn Féin event, warned that Israel would provoke ‘a new round of violence’ by pursing further annexations of Palestine.

The militant Palestinian group, which mounted the attack on Israel that killed more than 700 people at the weekend, has been deemed a terror organisation by the European Union since 2001.

Dr Basem Naim, head of Hamas’s Council on International Relations, was invited to speak at an online event hosted by Sinn Féin and opened by party leader Mary Lou McDonald in 2020.

The webinar took place in June that year and was hosted by Sinn Féin MLA Declan Kearney. The following month it featured in the party’s international bulletin, which was a ‘Palestine special’, focusing on the annexation of further territories by Israel in the West Bank.

Dr Naim said that Israel’s continued policy of annexing further land was a ‘fatal’ mistake and would lead to ‘a new round of violence’.

‘No one can expect that the Palestinians will escape any tool available to them to resist these plans… you can expect from any Palestinian that his lands, olive trees, all resources are stolen, he will defend himself by all means. No one can accuse the Palestinians that they are responsible for destabilising the situation,’ he said.

In an interview with RTÉ’s News at One on Monday, Ms McDonald said that she had met with Hamas when she visited the West Bank but did not mention any events hosted by her party. She said: ‘I have been to the West Bank and I have met with everybody… that’s the correct way to approach this.

‘We should know in Ireland, if you are serious about achieving a ceasefire, which is necessary, a path to peace and respect for international law in a conflict situation, you meet and talk to everybody. That’s the only way you can find a pathway forward.’

For all of you in Ireland thinking of voting Sinn Fein next election make sure you understand what real implications this might have and who they actually support. It is still terrorist organisations they cozy up to.