A critical mass gathers against the Zionist state.
28 OCTOBER—Catherine Connolly has such a sweet Irish face—broad and open, bright eyes with a touch of sadness about them, always either smiling or about to give the world one. She has Irish politics, too, this daughter of Galway: Ireland’s tenth president, elected last Friday, draws directly from the collective memory of Britain’s long, cruel colonization of her people when she condemns apartheid Israel’s long, cruel colonization of Palestinians. So do her voters: She had the support of 63 percent of them.
History does this sometimes, providing power does not bury it: Its bleak, violent chapters can induce among the living a heightened consciousness of and commitment to justice. This is among the many things that distinguish the Irish. Connolly calls the Zionist regime’s genocide just what it is and recognizes Hamas as “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people”—a liberation movement by any other name. Could she have expressed such an understanding so forthrightly had the Irish Republican Army not been part of the fabric of the Irish people all those years?
I read Connolly’s rise from the Dáil (where she was deputy speaker) to the Irish presidency as marking a progression in global politics we ought not miss. How to put this? The world has been turning against the Israeli terror regime since it began its spree of murder and starvation two Octobers ago. Now it is doing so decisively, so finding its collective voice at last. What you have heard ever more loudly on many streets these past two years you now hear at the highest levels of government. There is momentum, I mean to say, and it is in the right direction. Only in America is this not so—a point to which I will return.
Connolly’s election has reportedly prompted many Israelis to pledge never to set foot on the Emerald Isle. Brilliant: Israeli Zionists are joining in the urgent work of isolating Israeli Zionists. However many stay away, Ireland will be better off for each one.
There is a fleck of history here, too. As you may recall, the Irish were very quick to denounce the Israelis’ campaign of terror two autumns ago. By the end of 2023 there were left-wing calls in the Dáil to expel Dana Erlich, Tel Aviv’s predictably repellent ambassador. A few months later, in May 2024, Ireland formally recognized Palestinian sovereignty. At the end of that year the Netanyahu regime finally gave up. Its Foreign Ministry cited “the extreme anti–Israel policies of the Irish government” as it recalled Erlich and closed its embassy in Dublin.
Ireland’s anticolonial, anti-imperialist tradition and its reflexive sympathy for the oppressed are impossible to miss and, notably, never seem to bend in the wind. This makes me think Connolly’s voice is likely to prove especially strong—is “acute” my word?—on the Palestine question. But she jumps onto a moving train, let us not forget. The momentum just noted has been gathering for some time and now appears to be reaching critical mass.
My routine wanderings around “X” are a daily reminder of this reality. Here is a catalog—random, of greater and lesser magnitude, incomplete, in no particular order—gathered just over the past few days:
- Norway and Bibi’s arrest warrant. Twenty-two hours before I began this piece Norway reportedly issued “a strong call for the immediate arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.” I do not know who constitutes “Norway” in this case, but I think we can count this so: The Foreign Ministry has put out a statement confirming Oslo’s commitment to the rulings of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu last November. Reminder: The Ministry announced in August, as Bibi was preparing to overfly Europe en route to the U.N. General Assembly, that it would arrest him if he set foot in Norway.
- Starmer is named. In Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, a report issued by the U.N. on 20 October and signed by Francesca Albanese, the British prime minister is specifically cited for his complicity in Israel’s terror campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza. “On 9 October 2023, immediately after Israel announced a tightened siege on Gaza,” the report reads, “key Western leaders expressed support for the ‘self-defence’ of Israel… British opposition leader Keir Starmer defended Israel’s right to cut off water and power to civilians.”
- Spain’s arms embargo in action. Spain just opened a criminal investigation into Sidenor, the Spanish steelmaker, for selling product to Israel Military Industries, a subsidiary of the infamous Elbit Systems. This is the first major enforcement of the comprehensive arms embargo the Spanish Parliament just passed into law.
- The noose tightens. Late last week Banco Sabadell, a major Spanish institution, began freezing the accounts of Israelis, requiring them to sign declarations confirming they do no business with Israeli settlements. A bank official said all transactions involving Israelis must henceforth be approved by the bank’s compliance department.
- B.D.S. in action. Pizza Hut U.K. has announced it has closed 68 shops and 11 delivery sites: A boycott of the company in response to its business in Israel has forced it into a restructuring.
- The dual-loyalty scam. “People who serve in the Israeli military should be deported,” Tucker Carlson declared in an interview Wednesday. “You can’t fight for another country and remain American.” Finally it is said.
- A critical mass. Priests Against Genocide, which represents 1,200 Roman Catholic clerics, recently organized a march on the Italian parliament, where one priest said Mass while draped in a Palestinian flag. His sermon matched his vestments.
If these items seem a touch all-over-the-place, this is by design. My intent is simply to suggest what shapes up as a sort of all-of-society swell of objection we find in one or another form in many places. Any reader can add many of his or her own simply by skating around social media.
Catherine Connolly joins others in the highest offices—notably but not only Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, and the wonderful Gustavo Petro, the former liberation fighter now serving so honorably as Colombia’s president. Connolly’s ascent to their ranks signals that we are at the brink of a takeoff point, to borrow a term from the economists. This is my judgment. When we speak of a worldwide anti–Israel movement, we speak of one that begins to accumulate the power of nations behind it.
As we assess the current circumstance, we ought to bear the South African case in mind. When the Afrikaner regime finally fell, in 1994, it was primarily because its internal contradictions had become too many and too formidable. The apartheid system was no longer sustainable. The anti-apartheid movement accumulated its power gradually over many years—the movement against the Zionist state has gathered force much faster, if not fast enough—but the anti-apartheid cause eventually proved its effectiveness. The international pressure it exerted was among the stresses the Afrikaners could no longer bear.
Let us take the lessons this history offers.
The empty chairs at the table belong to the Americans. While Connolly joins Petro, Sánchez, et al. in high office, look at the Trump regime. The president, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and the others on Trump’s foreign policy “team” are by comparison monsters diametrically out of touch with the world, the zeitgeist, of another time, of another cause—a cause other than the human cause.
Do I have to admit that most Americans are similarly detached? I suppose I do. All praise to those who take to the streets as millions of others elsewhere do. But our numbers are small, reflecting many years of incessant propaganda, social atomization, the privatization of the collective consciousness, induced apathy. I see no other way to understand this and no persuasive reason to think the case will change.
To live so out of sync with the world, so indifferent to what the world announces that it cares about, will not serve America and Americans well over time. Our power elites stumble around the world, from one mess to another, accumulating the rest of humanity’s contempt. And the rest of us other than the conscientious few? Will international banks one day vet our accounts? It is far-fetched, but it is bitter even to pose the question.
When Irish eyes are smiling, all the world is bright and stands against Zionism. Isn’t that how the song goes?
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored. His website is Patrick Lawrence.us. Support his work via his Patreon site.