© UnknownBallina Ireland • Gaza Protest
Well, what a descent into the gutter. Only a few months ago, U.S. President Joe Biden was given a rapturous welcome when he visited the Irish town of Ballina. It is from here that his ancestors emigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century.
At the weekend, the town held a protest to condemn the genocide in Gaza and denounced the American president for his administration's disgraceful support to Israel. Biden was roundly vilified as Genocide Joe.
It was a relatively small gathering in Ballina of a couple of hundred people. But there have been several protests all over Ireland in recent weeks as well as in the major cities of Belfast and Dublin. The Irish demonstrations are part of a worldwide tide of protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Western governments' support that enables it.
© UnknownCitizens gather in protest of the Israeli genocide supported by US President Joe Biden
Biden has been labelled "Genocide Joe" by protesters in the United States and around the world who are incensed by Washington's complicity in Israel's mass killing of Palestinians over the past five weeks.
One of the public speakers to address the Ballina demonstration was from the ANSWER coalition in the United States. Crystal Kim, a human rights attorney from Florida, read out a statement from the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, in which she said the coalition endorsed the Irish people's denunciation of President Biden as a war criminal.
"The majority of American people do not support the U.S. policy of backing Israel's genocide," said the ANSWER envoy to resounding applause.
Worldwide there have been growing demonstrations including in major Western capitals like Washington DC, London, Berlin, Brussels and Paris demanding an end to the genocide. The surge in global anger is not just directed at the Israeli regime over its flagrant war crimes but also against the complicity of Western governments. There seems to be a historically significant new popular awareness and understanding of the structural Western state complicity in the roots of Palestinian injustice.
Ireland has seen massive protests in recent weeks held in Dublin and Belfast. Traditionally, Irish people have had strong solidarity with the Palestinian nation owing to a shared history of suffering colonial aggression.
But the demonstration in the small town of Ballina in the west of Ireland is particularly significant of how the public perception has soured profoundly towards the Israeli state and Western foreign policy, seen to be colluding in mass murder.
Back in April, Biden visited Ballina on an official trip and was given a hero's welcome by the town in County Mayo. He addressed thousands from a stage amid much pomp and ceremony for a "long lost Irish son". Biden's great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Ballina to the United States in 1851.
However, the nostalgia has given way to disgust. Speaker after speaker at the weekend demo in Ballina condemned "Genocide Joe" and declared that the town was ashamed now to be associated with an American president who has the blood of Palestinians on his hands.
When Biden was here in mid-April, the Irish media was full of syrupy coverage about the Irish roots of the president. Eulogies noted then that he was the second U.S. president - after John F Kennedy - with such direct genealogy to Irish immigrants.
The Irish Times published a puff piece headlined: "From Famine Ship to White House". In that corny version of family history it was claimed that Biden's ancestor joined the hordes of starving Irish during the Great Famine of 1845-1852 to escape for a new life in the United States. It was Disneyland-type American-Dream bullshit.
The truth is Biden's ancestor, Edward Blewitt, left Ireland with his family entourage as paid passengers on the SS Excelsior. Biden's progenitor had made his money from exploiting starving compatriots as an overseer of the workhouse in Ballina. Old man Blewitt was in the construction and stonemasonry business and he used the slave labor of the peasants who received charitable food handouts in return for toiling in his brick factory. The bricks were used to build the cathedral in Ballina which formed the backdrop for Biden's deceptive speech about Irish poverty making good in the Land of the Free. All very poetic in a macabre way.
Of course, the whole obsequious homecoming for Biden in Ballina was the usual misty-eyed falsification of history to suit Joe's ego and to ingratiate Ireland with Washington.
With the slaughter in Gaza, however, there has been a shocking realization not just in Ireland but all over the world as to the heinous culpability of the United States and other Western states in facilitating the war crimes.
Biden and other Western leaders have added to the sickened public perception of the barbarity of the Israeli regime through their cowardice and lies.
Biden has repeatedly claimed U.S. support for Israel's "right to self-defense" as it bombs Palestinians civilians supposedly in revenge for terror attacks on October 7 against Israelis by the militant Hamas group. The invoking of self-defense is a grotesque political cover for the Israeli regime's genocidal onslaught against Palestinians. Biden and other Western leaders, Britain's Sunak, Germany's Scholz, France's Macron, Canada's Trudeau, and the European Union's Von der Leyen, among others, have thus enabled Israeli war crimes. They are therefore, under international law, also liable for war crimes charges.
For decades, Washington and European powers have supported Israel's illegal occupation and aggression against Palestinians. Biden has been one of the most ardent U.S. politicians boosting Israel's violations of international law during his 50 years in politics. Biden is bought by the Israeli Zionist lobby in the United States and is up to his eyes in pay-back corruption as are most politicians in Washington, as well as supposed maverick outsiders like Trump, RFK and Vivek Ramaswamy. They're all pro-Zionist accomplices and tools of U.S. imperialist crimes.
Since the Israeli mass killings escalated after October 7 and ongoing, Biden has shown himself to be an odious accomplice to the genocide.
The level of degeneracy is illustrated by the contempt and condemnation now being flung at Biden in his ancestral town. The shame is palpable.
The wake-up is fitting. Biden's seeming sentimental connection with Ireland was always a fraud. His forebears profited from the genocidal famine in Ireland that the colonial British rulers instigated.
It is entirely consistent with Genocide Joe's sordid family history that he should now be on the side of the criminal colonial Israeli regime massacring Palestinian women and children and starving them to death.
About the Author:
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism (2019).
Comment: Kicked him to the curb, they did!