In recent years, Ireland has witnessed an unprecedented surge in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, marked by the largest mass mobilisations and widespread public support since the Water Charges campaign. After the announcement of a ceasefire and the election of a right-wing Irish government, this movement became cloudy, lacking direction and clear objectives, leading to fragmented efforts, conceding demands and diluting impact.
On the one hand, the Irish state claims to stand with Palestine. It recognises statehood, raises flags, and issues statements condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza. But behind these gestures lies a machinery of complicity. While Palestinians are being exterminated, Ireland is expanding its trade with Israel, facilitating military logistics through Shannon Airport, selling bonds through the Central Bank to the same states arming Israel, and allowing Irish technology firms to deepen ties with Israel’s security apparatus.
Economically Complicit
Trade between Ireland and Israel has increased during the ongoing assault on Gaza. In 2020, Israel’s exports to Ireland totalled just €198 million. In 2021, this figure reached €1.44 billion, growing to €3.26 billion in 2024. Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie argued that this trade entanglement reveals Ireland’s inaction on the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) and particularly the trade of services. By excluding services, Bresnihan and Brodie write, “the Government has shielded companies with EMEA headquarters in Ireland from being subject to Irish law for their operations in [the Occupied territories] – like Airbnb, or insurance brokers, who advertise lets and services in these illegal settlements.”. The tabling of the OTB without the inclusion of services allowed the Irish Government to deceive the public about fulfilling their legal obligation to prevent genocide. This is clear in the ways the media have reported on the decision, leaving the solidarity movement appalled.
Beyond the OTB, export licences for trade with Israel continue to be granted. Dual-use goods, including those that can be adapted for military use, flow freely. Irish tech companies such as Powell electronics are actively collaborating with Israeli firms, particularly in sectors related to parts of weapons, surveillance, cybersecurity, and AI. These industries are essential to Israel’s military infrastructure that massacres Palestinians in Gaza. The financial system that underpins global militarism runs through Ireland. The take-away point is that there is no firewall between Ireland’s economic policy and foreign policy. Every investment has political consequences. The Irish government and the ruling class are not only aiding and abetting genocide but are directly profitting from it.
Politically Complicit
Alongside this economic complicity is a host of other ways Ireland is linked to the mass slaughter of Palestinian life. Shannon Airport remains a strategic site in the US military supply chain. It is a present-day hub for transferring weapons, troops, and supplies. The Irish state has allowed it to operate this way for decades, claiming ignorance or insisting on legal technicalities. This has effectively made Irish soil a part of the route to genocide. Irish airspace has been another such conduit; countless unchecked planes bearing munitions and other critical parts have passed over Ireland on their way to the zionist war machine.
Then there has been the longstanding political cover of which refusing to expel the Israeli ambassador and the foot-dragging on joining the South Africa ICJ case are but the two most glaring examples.
These revelations expose the logic of Irish policy: make symbolic gestures, avoid material disruption, and maintain alignment with Western interests. The claim that Ireland is too small or too peripheral to matter is a convenient excuse. Small states make choices every day about how they participate in global systems. Ireland has chosen to remain embedded in a European and American bloc that arms and funds Israel.
The lip service is not a contradiction but a clear FF/FG policy of political gaslighting to contain dissent. The Irish government deceptively positions itself as neutral while integrating deeper into the global infrastructure that sustains the zionist settler-colonial regime. Currently such infrastructure allows thousands of US companies to use Ireland’s tax haven status as a hub to facilitate US imperial interests. There is no better place to witness the evils of capitalism than in Ireland’s tax haven model. We should be under no illusion about the Irish ruling class’s ambitions here. Wherever there is a chance to increase profits, morals – and even international law – can become easily disposable. The reality is clear, however, Ireland profits from the same war economy that is destroying Palestinian life.
Western Backdrop
Ireland’s complicity appears against the backdrop of EU militarisation and the US’s direct involvement in the genocide through the distribution of aid by the US/Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). This foundation has been used to lure hungry Gazan civilians to aid distribution sites, only to massacre them through drones and live ammunition. The Irish Government’s cosying up to the US and EU militarisation agenda can only be seen as a declaration on who their allies are and where the interests of the ruling class lie.
The Triple Lock mechanism, one of the last protections of Irish military neutrality, is being dismantled through new legislation by the Irish government. At the same time, defence budgets are increasing and NATO-aligned discourse is becoming dominant. Irish officials speak of European defence, strategic necessity, and international responsibility. These narratives mirror the justifications used to defend Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Neutrality is treated as an anachronistic ideal. Those who demand it are dismissed as naïve or unserious. This shift does not reflect the will of the people. It reflects the ambitions of a political class seeking approval from NATO and alignment with US foreign policy. Gramsci’s “passive revolution”; the absorption of dissent into the ruling order, explains much of the Western left’s paralysis against such developments. This duality of performative condemnation paired with material complicity reflects an Ireland trapped in, borrowing from Aimé Césaire, the “boomerang of colonialism”, the inability to confront empire abroad while profiting from its logic at home.
FF and FG have disgraced Ireland’s anti-colonial history. They cannot claim neutrality while facilitating military logistics for empire. Human rights language cannot cover for increased trade with an apartheid regime. Anti-colonial history means nothing if it is used as branding while the state contributes to the erasure of a colonised people.
Ireland’s political establishment is repositioning the state within the global imperial order. The consequences are not abstract but felt on the burning flesh of Palestinians and the amputated limbs of children. Every drone sold, every algorithm exported, every shipment through Shannon has a destination and a target. That destination is Gaza and the targets are Palestinians including children.
Standing with Palestine
Standing with Palestine requires a rupture with the systems that fund, arm, and legitimise Israel’s violence. That means shutting down Shannon as a military hub. It means halting trade with Israeli companies. It means divesting from tech firms that profit from necropolitical surveillance and violent machinery. It means speaking of international law not as a slogan but as a tool for accountability.
Lilla Watson, the Murri indigenous artist, distills the stakes: “If you have come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Palestinian liberation is bound together with the liberation of all people. Ireland is crippled by its relationship with the US and the West. It is held as economic hostages to US corporations and the EU, while both blocs arm themselves at an ever-accelerating pace, bringing Ireland and the world closer to a vicious and violent reckoning.
As Frantz Fanon warned in The Wretched of the Earth, “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove” (Fanon, 1961). Palestine is Ireland’s litmus test, a demand not for tears but for teeth.
