19th June 2026
Speech Delivered at Anti-Zionist Rally
First Speech
A chairde, today, we are not here to deliver a performance of grief nor cry out in helplessness. We are here because the U.S. and the Zionist entity continue to carry out in broad daylight their coordinated genocidal attacks on Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran, being protected and assisted by the British government, which occupies us here in the six counties. We are here because we refuse to normalise the violence being carried out. We are here because we are not merely witnesses but because each of us, on whatever scale we exist, bears responsibility in this violence that, if we refuse to acknowledge, makes us shamefully complicit.
This genocidal war is not some distant violence, in some distant geographic region, no, it is a violence that begins here in the West, from where it has been given permission and protection to ensue. The atrocities being committed by the Zionist entity and the United States, whose very existences are predicated on ongoing settler colonialism, are not unusual. They are not the result of specific individuals or administrations, such as Netanyahu or Trump for these figures are not faults in that system; they are in power because the system is working as intended. Thus, we must reject attempts to exceptionalise this violence as unprecedented or to individualise it, as that not only absolves the wider, death machine of imperialism but is also an offence against all those victims of Zionism and imperialism whose suffering precedes the century and for whom justice has yet to be sought. Indeed, there have been attempts by the mainstream media to depict this coordinated U.S. Zionist effort of evil as being that of an isolated 'war of defence' on Gaza, an 'escalating ground operation' in Lebanon, and a U.S. war on Iran in the name of 'regime change'. We reject these false pretences for none name the violence for what it is: an imperialist, capitalist, settler-colonial, genocidal project that will stop at nothing. We reject the fragmentation of these fronts who are united in their anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist resistance.
Let it also be clear that Zionism, as a settler colonial project, has always needed and will always need imperial sponsorship and collaboration to survive. From this very island, in Shannon and Aldergrove, take off U.S. warplanes critical for the continuation of the genocide, unchallenged by the colonial parliaments of Leinster House, Stormont, and Westminster. The semi-colonial government of the 26 counties continues to send so-called 'peacekeeping forces', 300 of which remain in south Lebanon today, whose main objective is to keep the peace in Lebanon only for the international bourgeoisie. They continue to hamper the resistance on the ground who actively resist the genocidal Zionist entity. We must not forget that the government of the 26-counties, as well as the comprador bourgeoisie in Ireland, actively profit from Zionism, and will continue to legitimise Zionism with their claims that it is impossible to withdraw funds and forces. We must not fall for platitudes that are produced only to quell dissent from the masses of Ireland. It is also through U.S. bases in GCC states such as the U.A.E and Kuwait, as well as Jordan, that warplanes and missiles toward Iran are launched. Resisting Zionism hence necessitates resisting all forms of imperialism and challenging these comprador states.
Second Speech
Comrades, we are here because we have an obligation – not a choice – but an obligation toward those who face and resist this violence. An obligation born out of the refusal to be bystanders because we recognise our role within the system, and that we maintain an agency to act that cannot be taken away from us. Sympathy is not enough, solidarity is not enough, we must struggle too. We recognise this joint struggle, because we are engaged in our own: the Republican struggle for a liberated, united, Socialist Ireland. Irish Republicans have stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people for decades – not out of any sentiment, but out of a shared understanding, suffering, and resistance. Republicans who know what it means to have their land occupied, their culture suppressed, their fighters criminalised, and their struggle dismissed as terrorism. We are thus obliged to act, not only to the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians confronting imperialist violence in this moment, but to honour those Irish republicans, martyred and imprisoned, who hungered and fought for justice and who continue to do so.
We say these ongoing atrocities are not unusual as they are the inevitable product of a system working precisely as intended – that of capitalism – one that requires constant imperial domination to sustain itself, one that turns land and people into resources, and that will always find and form a new 'Israel', a new colony, a new front, wherever profit and strategic interest demand it. Imperialist violence stems from the innate fact of Capital itself, that infinite profit growth is impossible in a finite world, and thus the turn to profit made from the subjugation of millions. We find here that direct action against Zionist interests alone cannot solve the fundamental problem of capitalism. The problem is systemic, and the solution must also be systemic - that solution is socialism, the end of the capitalist order that makes imperialism not just possible but necessary. And that requires organisation - patient, disciplined, long-term revolutionary organisation. This is where and why we as Marxist Leninists in Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta organise not just to show up at rallies, but to do the unglamorous work of building sustainable structures, educating members, forging links between struggles, and preparing for the long fight, to achieve true political and economic liberation from Ireland to Palestine.
What does it really mean to inherit the struggle? First and foremost, we do not decide from a distance in the West what form Palestinian, Lebanese, or Iranian resistance should take. We listen, and we learn from the refugee camps, the occupied villages, the prison cells, the trenches and the tunnels that birth anti-Zionist resistance. When anti-Zionist groups issue calls to action – be it blockades of arms shipments, days of action, political prisoners' campaigns – we answer those calls with no hesitation that we might lose certain privileges or risk discomfort. No aspect of personal or professional life that is threatened by opposition to Zionism is one worth protecting. We must also boycott not only passively, but actively through disruption and direct action: in workplaces, in unions, in universities, for every act of organised resistance weakens the machinery of occupation and imperialism. Here in Belfast, corporations such as Thales and Caterpillar run on profits they have made from bombing and bleeding Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian people. They go on to be rewarded for this by being hosted for conferences by Queen's University Belfast, who continues to invest in Zionism while maintaining research partnerships with Israeli universities. These bodies are not neutral actors; they are active participants in this genocide. Every purchase, every contract, every unopposed lobbying event empowers the Zionist and imperialist machinery - but we can and will challenge it.
We must not stop there. We must call out as well the hypocrisy present by those claiming to be anti-Zionists: the trade union leaderships that pass motions and do nothing, the NGOs that sanitise the language of genocide into 'humanitarian crisis', the political parties that publicly condemn Zionism while privately cooperating to protect it. They pose a great risk: an illusion of justice, an illusion of change which sentence revolutionary movements to death before they are even born. We must not fall for this illusion. Comrades, imperialism will not be moved by our grief. It will not be shamed into retreat. It does not respond to candlelight vigils or strongly worded statements. The Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian people do not need our tears - they need us to be effective, to take risks, and to disrupt the supply chain of genocide that assembles and passes through our cities. The fall of U.S. imperialism, and by extension Zionism, will be brought about only through our active assistance in making that happen - here on the soil of Ireland. As long as capitalism exists, imperialism will exist, and it will only be defeated by organised, disciplined, resistance and international working-class led struggle – nothing else. We know what needs to be done.