Irish Left With Ukraine – Neither Moscow nor Washington

Des Derwin

After the Iranian missile attacks on Israel, will a heresy cross the minds of any ‘anti-imperialists’, anti-war, peace and neutrality campaigners, or ‘both-siders’ quoting Karl Liebknecht, vintage 1915 (“The main enemy is at home”)? Cross the thoughts of those who have abhorred solidarity with Ukraine and insisted that the war in Ukraine is a proxy inter-imperialist war, and not a resistance against occupation and for self determination? Will the outlandish thought occur of withdrawing from solidarity with Palestine and Gaza because the war on Gaza is really, as ‘shown’ by recent events (Iranian missiles on Israel, etc.), a proxy inter-imperialist war between the camps of Iran-Syria-Lebanon-Yemen- Palestine-Russia etc., etc. and US-NATO-EU-Israel-Ukraine etc., etc? 

Almost certainly not. Their empathy and support for Palestine and the Palestinians will be unshaken. As it should be. Yet a chink of doubt may be opened by that very unshakability, and its comparison to the mental context they have built for Ukraine. Isn’t Ukraine, like Palestine, opposing conquest by an empire, and not merely, or by any stretch of the imagination, cooperating with an empire to wage war against another empire?  Surely Palestine, even after receiving verbal and even material assistance from Iran, an ally of Russia, even after Iran has bombed Palestine’s enemies and occupiers, is not thereby a proxy of Iran and its international allies?

Russian (and North Korean supplied) bombs and missiles against cities, civilians and infrastructure are – somehow – deemed different to Israeli (and US supplied) bombs and missiles against cities, civilians and infrastructure. Palestine is subject to Western imperialism and occupation and must be supported (and this is true) but Ukraine is not subject to Russian imperialism and occupation and must not be supported. Actually, any support for Ukraine, body armour, de-mining or weapons training, must be vigorously opposed – because of Irish neutrality – according to the selective logic of the organised Irish radical left.  Can this ‘logic’ hold indefinitely?

It is disconcerting that the ‘moderate’ or social democratic left in Ireland has supported Ukraine (and Palestine, mind you) while the organised far left has definitely not supported Ukraine. Our hypothetical heresy (Palestine might be caught up in a proxy war – but that’s not the point ) has occurred to the left-leaning writer and ‘public intellectual’ Fintan O’Toole. To him it is not heresy but background context that “there has been in effect a proxy war between the two countries [Israel and Iran] for decades” (Irish Times, April 16^th, 2024). He accuses “the West” of making the great historic mistake of seeing “the fate of the Palestinians as a matter of great power rivalry rather than of basic justice. To be pro- or anti-Palestinian became a proxy for identification with one or another of the Cold War poles. This obscured the reality that allowing millions of people to remain displaced in one of the world’s most unstable regions was not just wrong but highly dangerous”.  This is reason not heresy, seen by almost all who see the daily news. It is time for to see Ukraine through the same undistorted lens that we see Palestine. The lens of human empathy and solidarity. Indeed of social and class consciousness rather than geopolitical sorting. Fintan O’Toole would be wrong to suggest, if he is suggesting it, that a war between Israel and Iran is anything like the essence of the situation in Palestine, that situation being Israel’s usurpation of Palestine, backed by Western imperialism.  But what he, and the entire left and most Irish people, assume for Palestine should now be universally realised for Ukraine: the great mistake of seeing “the fate of the Palestinians as a matter of great power rivalry rather than of basic justice”. The great mistake that “To be pro- or anti-Palestinian became a proxy for identification with one or another of the Cold War poles”. The resistance of a country attacked by an imperialism, the supply of support, material and arms from an obnoxious state or a rival alliance, to a people invaded, occupied and slaughtered, an element of inter-imperialist rivalry – appearing in almost any war or conflict you can think of in modern and early modern times – does not define that situation as an inter-imperialist war, or the defender or insurgent as a proxy for the other camp.