Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced plans to formally recognize a Palestinian state next week. In his remarks, Irish leader Simon Harris noted the connections between Ireland and Palestine.

DAVID CRONIN, david@electronicintifada.net, @dvcronin
Cronin is associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and author of Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel. Cronin stressed that he doesn’t believe that the Irish move is worthy of praise, saying that such a move is “no substitute for sanctions.” (See The Electronic Intifada’s new weekly livestream.)

The Irish Times published his piece “Winston Churchill sent the Black and Tans to Palestine” about how British officials used forces that had oppressed the Irish against Palestinians as well.

His piece was written on the “centenary of the Balfour Declaration. The November 1917 letter to the Zionist movement committed Britain to support the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine. Through that document, the world’s pre-eminent power gave its backing to a project aimed at colonising with Europeans a land where most of the population was Arab.

“Arthur James Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary and the declaration’s signatory, had previously served as chief secretary of Ireland. He was best known for ordering police to open fire on an 1887 land reform protest in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. Resulting in three deaths, the incident earned him the sobriquet Bloody Balfour.”

His recent articles include “Time for outrage over Israel’s meddling in European affairs,” and “Why I ‘arrested’ von der Leyen for aiding Gaza genocide” about the president of the European Commission.

See IPA news release: “St. Patrick’s Day and Gaza.”