Election 24 Palestinians Before Politics. – by Fra Hughes

With the British general election taking place on Thursday July 4th 2024, as Americans celebrate Independence Day, it’s ironic that Sinn Fein’s visit to Washington for the Irish St Patrick’s Day celebrations in 2023 should hang like a spectre over their electoral prospects. Their recent political failures in the Free State may well reflect a growing disenchantment with the friends and the road they have chosen to travel. The fall out from their quisling appearance with genocide Joe in America’s capital might yet throw a spanner into their chances of success at the ballot box.

The uproar, dismay and disgust which followed on from their validation of Biden’s war on the civilian population of Gaza may indeed have long lasting consequences for the party. I myself contemplated an intervention in North Belfast but partly due to my respect for the legacy of Pat Finucane , I refrained. My intention was not to win the seat but to allow people who wanted to send SF an unequivocal message on their appeasement of the neo liberal war mongers in America, Nato and the EU, to show publicly their opposition to the strategy and policies of SF in 2024 who have become the new Fianna Fail in Irish politics, a party for big business and a party of the neo liberal agenda, followed and promoted by so many leaders and governments in the West, a policy of business first, of increased privatisation , of profits ,of diminished public services, that leads to economic stagnation for the many ,homelessness, insecure employment ,hospital waiting lists, house ownership unaffordability, food banks,huge child poverty levels and enlarged bank balances for the few.

The party I supported that once called for a 32 county socialist Ireland is dead and with it the dream of an Ireland where resources and the wealth of the nation were reinvested in the people ,in families, in hope and in our children,not in foreign corporations, banks,property vulture funds, oil and gas profiteers.

 Interventions might have well given the North Belfast seat to Unionism and indeed Fermanagh South Tyrone to mention only two.

I see the election posters in West Belfast for People Before Profit candidate Gerry Carroll also highlight the slogan Palestine not Washington? I must admit when I first saw this I automatically thought it was disgusting. A cheap electioneering stunt. It is designed to hammer SF on the Palestine issue. To draw a section of the SF disenchanted voters base into the clutches of PBP, It’s not about Palestine for PBP, it’s about further eroding the SF vote in West Belfast. A useful slogan to galvanise those who support the Palestinian cause to coalesce around the party. A disingenuous electoral gambit to gain votes for PBP at the expense of SF but also at the expense of Palestinians suffering genocide. If Carroll’s posters said, I Stand with Palestine ,then I wouldn’t be writing this, but to say Palestine not Washington is simply a cheap political gimmick unworthy of anyone’s support as it is clearly a swipe at their electoral opponents.

I will be completing my ballot paper on Thursday but unfortunately due to libel laws I cannot print here that which I may write tomorrow. They say politics is a dirty game but ignoring tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and going to Washington is only equalled by using those same tens of thousands of dead Palestinians as an electoral ploy to enhance your party’s prospects. A plague on both your houses.

 With hindsight I should have run as an independent pro Palestine candidate if only to allow the electorate in North Belfast an opportunity to send these electoral locusts a clear and unambiguous message: it’s not about votes, it’s about genocide. Don’t you get it yet?