DUP still defends its decision to stand with pro-genocide protestor

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politicians have maintained they were correct to stand alongside masked men who hurled racist and sectarian abuse at a peaceful pro-Palestine march.

MP for Upper Bann, Carla Lockhart, incongruously claimed that she showed “real leadership” by joining a 300-strong pro-genocide mob, which jeered relentlessly metres away from the roughly 1,500-strong Palestine-backing contingent.

The latter were taking part in the Great March for Gaza, an event raising money for Palestinians still being murdered by Israeli Occupation Forces. Part of the march on 6 June passed along a towpath beside the largely unionist town of Scarva, prompting hostility from some residents.

Lockhart said she was there to “ensure calm heads prevailed and no one was hurt or injured in what had the potential to be a volatile situation”.

She further claimed to have averted “an absolute bloodbath” through her actions on the day. If the situation needed calming, it was only because the DUP had done everything imaginable to whip things up to fever pitch prior to the march.

The party suggested the march route had been “deliberately chosen to provoke tensions”. In fact the organisers, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ireland (IPSC Lurgan), had selected a route that would avoid contentious areas to the maximum extent possible.

DUP stir confected outrage then play mediator

On the day of the march, Lockhart dishonestly attempted to link the march to republican paramilitaries. She also suggested the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea‘ is a “hate crime given its meaning is to exterminate the land of Israel and its inhabitants from off the face of the earth”.

Of course, its actual meaning is simply a call for one democratic state between the sea and the Jordan river, with equal rights for all who live there. The outrageous falsehood that it is anything else is purely Zionist propaganda, intended to whip up hostility to those trying to stop so-called ‘Israel’s’ holocaust in Gaza.

Lockhart published footage of herself speaking to Scarva residents prior to the Great March for Gaza’s arrival.

In it, she does request calm, and urges residents not to engage in violence. However, it’s a bit rich to get people as riled up as possible beforehand, then swoop in at the last minute and act like the stateswoman. You can’t take credit for defusing the very tension which had been partly created by your own actions.

It’s a little like when people celebrate Britain for ending slavery. You can’t do something obviously wrong for ages, then expect everyone to laud you when finally, belatedly, you cease your shameful behaviour.

At Stormont, DUP MLA, Diane Forsythe, was flipping her lid over what she described as an “excessive” policing.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was indeed out in force, bringing riot cops and water cannons to the scene. They described it as a “appropriate and proportionate policing operation“. This seems about right, given the numbers present on each side, and the wild rhetoric going out from loyalist groups beforehand.

March exposes nature of those for/against genocide

On the one hand, we’re told by the DUP that “an absolute bloodbath” was on the horizon. Yet on the other hand, we’re supposed to believe a large police presence was “excessive”. This is the non-logic of a party that knows how to whip up confected, sectarianised outrage but does nothing of actual use for their constituents.

IPSC Lurgan correctly said the march was neither “intimidating, sectarian or provocative”. It pointed out what all available footage shows — that participants were “peaceful, dignified and disciplined throughout”. This didn’t stop Forsythe outright lying.

He said:

…when the Palestine walk appeared, [they] unfurled their banners and chanted at the crowd [opposite]…

No such event occurred at any stage. In reality, the two groups on either side of Newry canal provided an unmatched depiction of those for and against the Gaza holocaust.

On one side, those waving the Zionist entity’s flag, hate-filled and throwing disgusting abuse, shoulder to shoulder with politicians that allow the slaughter in Gaza to continue. On the other, an entirely peaceful humanitarian procession, doing what little they can to support those enduring some of the worst crimes in human history.

Featured image via the Canary