When Irish soldiers march into the shattered towns of southern Lebanon, they won’t be bringing peace. They’ll be carrying the flag of European capital. The planned EU military mission to replace UNIFIL is about protecting Zionist interests in a region rich with resources and geopolitical strategic importance. It is certainly not about protecting Lebanese civilians.
Follow the money. The EU’s “financial instruments” will fund this operation through the Common Security and Defence Policy. That’s our taxes paid by working people struggling with housing costs and rising prices being funnelled into military adventures thousands of miles away.
General Clancy admitted today that the mission will be “modest” to start, with “opportunities… to evolve and grow”. How many more Irish families will receive that dreaded knock on the door? How many more soldiers will return with physical and psychological scars?
Ireland’s 300-plus soldiers currently deployed in Lebanon face an increasingly dangerous situation. Zionist forces have established a buffer zone, levelling towns and villages, continuing their killing spree, and creating thousands of homeless civilians. Irish troops are caught in the middle of a Zionist war they didn’t create, serving Zionist interests they didn’t choose.
Helen McEntee’s deflection when asked about the Triple Lock earlier today is telling: she claims “it is not for any country… to decide where we put our troops”. But this is precisely the point. The Irish people should decide. Instead, the Dublin Government signs up to EU missions while the Dáil becomes a rubber stamp. The EU military committee, where General Clancy now sits, has no democratic mandate from Irish workers. It is an unelected body making decisions with life-and-death consequences for our communities.
The most damning indictment of this mission is not just the Dublin Government’s complicity. It is the silence, or worse, the qualified acceptance, from sections of the self-identified left in Ireland who should know better. While we name the Zionist character of this intervention and the working class blood it will spill, certain “progressive” voices offer only mild criticism. They tut-tut about the triple lock. They express “concern” about mission creep. They propose “amendments” and “oversight mechanisms.” But they will not say the necessary words: Ireland Out of the EU.
What are they afraid of? The answer is simple and damning. They are afraid of being called “right-wing” or “nationalist”. They are afraid of being isolated from the liberal consensus. They are afraid of losing their privileges, their seats, their media access, their invitations to the right panels. They have become comfortable critics, always inside the system, never threatening it. These self-styled leftists have accepted the fundamental premise of Irish politics: that EU membership is non-negotiable, that “Europe” is our natural home, that the only path forward is reform from within. This is the politics of surrender.
Nobody with a braincell can accept the EU as a neutral institution. Or that it can be “reformed” by progressive forces. The EU is an imperialist project from its very foundations. It was built on the ruins of working class movements, designed to integrate European capitalism against the threat of socialism. Its treaties enshrine the primacy of capital, the free movement of profit and the subordination of national sovereignty to supranational institutions controlled by bankers and bureaucrats.
The Common Security and Defence Policy which funds this mission is not a “peacekeeping” framework. It is the military arm of European imperialism, created to project power into former colonies and resource-rich regions. To “reform” the CSDP is like reforming a knife to be less sharp while it’s still on your throat.
While the political class debates foreign policy, working-class Ireland is drowning. Look at the numbers. The average rent in Dublin now exceeds €2,400 per month. A single parent on €35,000 a year takes home about €2,800 monthly. After rent, they have €400 for food, utilities, transport, and clothing. That’s €13 a day. A child’s school shoes cost €50. A winter coat costs €80. A GP visit costs €65. One unexpected bill and we’re choosing between heat and dinner.
Food banks are reporting record demand. Crosscare, the Dublin food charity, distributed over 6,000 emergency food parcels in 2024, up 40% from the previous year. In Limerick, St. Vincent de Paul reported that 1 in 4 calls now comes from someone in full-time employment. Working people are struggling with the basics. The basics being food and shelter.
The housing list stands at over 120,000 households. Families are living in emergency accommodation. Over 14,000 people, including 4,000 children, in hotels and B&Bs. A child in emergency accommodation has no desk to do her homework, no kitchen to eat a hot meal, no privacy. They arrive at school exhausted, ashamed, and behind. And the mam who got her there is supposed to be grateful.
Meanwhile, the Daft.ie property listings: €6.75 million homes in Kinsealy, €2.8 million in Killiney. The same political class that sends working class soldiers to Lebanon is the class that benefits from the housing crisis at home. The Defence Forces are now being sent to carry out Zionist controlled EU foreign policy on the cheap.
Think of the families queuing at St. Vincent de Paul food banks. A young mam holds a bag of pasta and canned tomatoes, her child’s hand in hers. She is a nurse. Or a care worker. Or a cleaner at the hospital. She works 40 hours a week. She cannot afford a home of their own. She cannot afford a holiday. She cannot afford to replace her son’s shoes that have holes in the toes, never mind pay for her son to join the local soccer club, the GAA club, the Comhaltas group, the afterschool activities, the list could go on. But her taxes? They are being sent to bomb Lebanese villages so Zionist capital can secure its gas pipelines in the EU.
That is the reality the Dublin Government does not want you to see. That is the reality our left critics refuse to connect to foreign policy. The Irish left’s strategy of “critical engagement” with the EU has produced exactly nothing of substance. For decades, we have been told that “inside the EU we can change things.” And what has changed?
· Workers’ rights have been decimated.
· Public services have been privatised under EU competition law.
· Corporate tax rates have been dictated from Brussels.
· Irish neutrality has been systematically dismantled.
· And now, Irish soldiers are being sent to West Asia to prop up Zionist interests without democratic mandate.
The EU’s response to the Palestine genocide has been shameful. Its response to Lebanon is worse. Military intervention is being dressed up as “stabilisation.” And our left “critics” offer what? A motion of concern? An amendment to the Defence Bill? A strongly worded letter? A protest somewhere that says Free Palestine. This is not anti-imperialism. This is imperialism with a conscience, and a conscience is no defence against bombs.
Some on the left argue that we can be “critical” of the EU while remaining inside it. They propose a kind of “progressive nationalism” that works within EU structures to advance social justice. This is a fantasy. The EU’s fundamental architecture cannot be reformed to serve working class interests because it was designed to serve capital. The treaties lock in neoliberalism and all of the institutions are controlled by Zionist puppets. The Court of Justice enforces Zionist corporate rights over workers’ rights.
Consider the fact that the European Central Bank sets interest rates to control inflation, but never to create jobs. The Stability and Growth Pact caps government spending, forcing austerity during recessions. The Competition Directorate fines Google €8 billion but waves through the privatisation of Irish water and healthcare. The EU is not an arena where progressive forces can win. It is a battlefield and we are losing. Every “reform” has been co-opted and every so-called “concession” has either been a trap, or taken away.
A socialist Ireland must be an Ireland outside the EU. This is not nationalism in the bourgeois sense. Our demands must be clear:
· Immediate withdrawal from the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy
· No Irish troops to Lebanon or any other EU military mission
· Repeal of the Lisbon Treaty provisions that subordinate Irish sovereignty
· A democratic referendum on continued EU membership, not the staged, scripted referenda of the past, but a genuine debate about our future.
We stand with the people of Palestine and Lebanon by breaking the chains of Zionism and that means breaking with the imperialist system that oppresses them and us, the working poor here at home. Ignoring us, the working poor is the biggest failure of the so-called left, and its unwillingness to see us, and connect us to the Palestine movement.
We, the Irish working class face a choice. We can continue to bleed for Zionist and European capital, or break free and build a sovereign, socialist republic. The debt we owe to our peacekeepers is not more missions. It is bringing them home and building a country worth coming home to. The debt we owe to the next generation is to create a country worth staying at home for, living in and fighting for.