While regular collapses of the Northern Ireland Assembly have frequently rendered Stormont vacant, the more conventional absence of members for summer lasts from 5 July to 31 August. Yesterday saw the first debating session of the new term, and pro-Palestine campaigners were keen to ensure the Gaza genocide was on the agenda.
Local activist group Mothers Against Genocide organised a protest demanding that our politicians do more to end the active participation of the North of Ireland in so-called Israel’s atrocities.
Mothers Against Genocide: protesters take to Stormont
The roughly 150 in attendance marched to the front of Stormont, including protestors from Craftivism for Palestine, carrying a 145ft crocheted blanket made up of 2,300 squares, with each one representing ten of the 23,000 children estimated by the official death toll to have been murdered by Zionist terrorists. The actual number is likely to be far higher.
Others carried clothes lines of garments once again highlighting the mass killing of innocent children, or held bloodied pillows resembling a dead child wrapped in a shroud. Speeches were delivered on the need for Stormont to do more to end its part in the genocide:
One poignant moment was retired Presbyterian minister Bill Shaw breaking down as he explained how children in Gaza wanted to die and go to heaven, as there would at least be food there. In a study reported by the Guardian in December 2024, well before the Zionist pseudo-state accelerated its Holocaust to its current peak, 49% of Gaza’s children had expressed a desire to die, with 96% feeling their death was imminent.
A ‘die-in’ followed, as protestors lay on the ground to represent all those killed in the besieged enclave. This coincided with a letter being handed to Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) featuring the demands of Mothers Against Genocide. It began by highlighting that members of the Assembly continue to “ignore their legal duties” before going on to unfavourably compare the actions of North of Ireland politicians to those in another devolved region – Scotland. The letter pointed out how the latter government has “paused all new public funding to arms firms supplying Israel” and called for boycott, divestments, and sanctions against Netanyahu’s criminal regime.
North of Ireland Assembly: complicit in genocide
The key demands of the letter to Stormont included calling for an “immediate ceasefire and the unobstructed delivery of humanitarian aid”, a:
pause on all new funding or contracts to firms linked to Israel’s military” and “an end to rates relief for Caterpillar.
The section regarding funding and contracts refers to government subsidy vehicle Invest NI’s appalling handouts to numerous companies implicated in the murderous F35 program. A recent Act Now report named four local companies – RLC (UK), Moyola Precision Engineering, Survitec, and Electronic Automation Engineers – as likely being involved in the manufacture of parts for the warplane that has been key to the genocide carried out by so-called Israel, the USA, Britain, Ireland, and numerous others.
The “rates relief to Caterpillar” focuses on another corporate giveaway, which entails making big business exempt from paying the rates everyone else is subject to. The ‘industrial derating’ policy is unique among England and devolved nations, with England abolishing the practice way back in 1963. The obscenity of extending it to genociders like the firm known locally as ‘Caterkiller’ should be immediately obvious, as the company continues to sell bulldozers to Israel used to level Palestinian homes.
Settler colonial mentality persists among political parties in the North of Ireland
Gerry Carroll from People Before Profit, Colin McGrath of the SDLP, Nicola Brogan of Sinn Féin, and Eóin Tennyson of Alliance were present to receive the letter.
Stormont is due to debate a ceasefire and aid delivery to Gaza today, with Carroll intending to support the motion, and add an amendment calling on:
Stormont to pressure the British Govt over allowing Aldergrove to be used by US warplanes on their way to Israel.
Representatives from the DUP, UUP, and TUV were conspicuous in their absence, though their non-appearance was unsurprising. A settler-colonial mentality persists among these parties, and that extends to their backing of the Zionist entity’s settler-colonial apartheid regime.
Other parties, whose support for Palestine has been largely in words rather than deeds, must redouble their efforts in applying pressure to force an end to the slaughter.
Featured image via the Canary
