Settler Colonialism
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A change of tack for today’s post, on this Glorious Twelfth. Your correspondent was struck by a thought in writing one of his letters on Palestine and the injustices visited upon the Palestinian people: that the Jewish people, as a nation, have a natural claim to a nation state, particularly given the two millennia of…
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I While it was clearly the correct thing to do, not to mention a demonstration of a minimal ability to engage in diplomacy, the coordinated recognition by Ireland, Norway and Spain of Palestine came with a large serving of self-importance. Why the need for the leaders of all three cretinous Government Parties to stand side…
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Time seems to have sped up, and there is so much to process that this writer more practised in ancient grudge is once again working away in the glare of the news-screen. In recent days we have seen, of course, the continuing genocide in Palestine committed by extremists robed in the gentility that settler colonists…
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I Tom Murphy’s Bailegangáire does not exist—town without laughter—but almost any town in Ireland could be called Bailegangaeilge—town without Irish—except that it would be known instead as Ballygongwailga. It surprises and disappoints this writer that the Irish people consent to live in a land of makey-uppy placenames. The worst recent example that your correspondent has…
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I Like anyone in the Late Capitalist world, particularly that part of it stuck in the English language, this epistolarian has some ability to opine on the Present State of the United States. That he prefers not to do so is a proper reaction to that common situation whereby Irish people speak about the USA…
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The attempted rejection of Comparison when it comes to Northern Ireland—that is, the rejection of history, of naming the Occupation Administration as a settler colonial project, an ongoing act of violence—has as a quite natural corollary the need to encourage the promotion of a new species of vocabulary, the specimens of which remind the observer…
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Writing about the census conducted in the Occupied Territories in 2021 presents the familiar problem of distinguishing between a religious label as it refers to religious practice, compared to its use as a stand-in for ethnic identity. The census collected two slightly different sets of figures, asking questions about religion, and about religion of upbringing;…
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Ulster was the site of the greatest resistance to colonialism. For this, it was subject to the greatest usurpation: extensive settler colonialism. There is no secret here. The heirs to this occupation boast of it, dream of it, live it. It is the condition of their being. They hate the natives with the familiar venom of settler colonists anywhere who…
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VII If it is wrong for Hamas to kill civilians, then it must also be wrong for Israel to do so, particularly since Israel is—we are told—a State, whereas Hamas is not. But many leaders accept that Israel can murder multiples of the numbers of its own dead, brown lives being so cheap. This, clearly, is to…
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IV What does it mean to say you support or condemn a particular action, the way that Palestinians and their defenders are asked to condemn Hamas? Anyone wishing to defend the rights of Palestinians to exist, and certainly to exist in their own homeland, is expected to start off with a condemnation of Hamas. This is a…