• Say Free Palestine on Saint Patrick's Day

By Matthew Hoh, April 17, 2024

I gave a Saint Patrick’s Day speech at a rally for Palestine today. Last year, I spent Saint Patrick’s Day standing in a bar with a fellow Marine veteran. In 2010, he had been a mortar man with Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, in Sangin, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In a few months, more than one in five of those Marines and sailors were casualties. Thirteen years later, he still didn’t know what it was for.

We stood there and medicated and punished ourselves with beer and whiskey. At some point, our ire and anger over the wars turned to ire and anger over the band in the bar. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and we were in an Irish bar, with the band playing pop songs rather than Irish music. There certainly was none of the Irish rebel music we wanted, and at some point, we sang it ourselves. I remember us spending quite a while on Grace; it was one of those nights.

We were quite aware that we were on the wrong side of those songs in our wars. That we were to the Afghans and Iraqis what the British were to our Irish ancestors.

I wasn’t in a bar this Saint Patrick’s Day but at a rally supporting the Palestinian people. Next year, perhaps there will be no more collective punishment, no more ethnic cleansing, and no more genocide in the Holy Land, and I can spend Saint Patrick’s Day in a bar with beer and whiskey, upset at the band. Today, however, was spent doing what little I could to be on the right side this time.

Here’s the video of my speech. A transcript, edited for clarity, is pasted below.

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, and as many of you know, millions of Irish and Irish Americans are in solidarity with the Palestinian people. For many of us, this is personal.

My grandmother was born in 1909 in County Tipperary, southern Ireland. When she was nine years old, in 1918, the Irish War of Independence began, and it began in her county. Her family were members of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade, and the 3rd Tipperary fought the British Army so [fiercely] the British could not control Tipperary County. In 1920, Winston Churchill sent a special unit to Ireland, and he sent that unit first to Tipperary, and that unit was the Black and Tans.

For people not familiar with the Black and Tans, the Black and Tans were primarily composed of unemployed British veterans of the First World War. They were described as half drunk and wholly mad, and they committed mass atrocities against the Irish people. The goal was to break the spirit of the rebellion, to break the Irish people. But the Irish people didn’t break, my family didn’t break, and in 1922, the British Empire was defeated, Ireland, or most of Ireland won its independence, and the British Army was forced to retreat.

Now, where did Winston Churchill send the Black and Tans to [next]?

He sent them to Palestine.

So the very same units, the very same men, that terrorized, that murdered, that tortured my family, their neighbors and friends, the very same units and men that burnt their homes, that defiled their fields, that slaughtered their livestock, they did the same to the Palestinians.

What binds us forever, though, in addition to that, is just like my family, the Palestinians fought back.

But the British Army didn’t just stop their murdering, their terrorizing and torture, their burning, their defiling, and their slaughtering. They passed that on, what they called Black and Tan Traditions, to the Zionist militias, and those Zionist militias became the IDF. For eight decades, the IDF has carried out the Black and Tan Traditions against the Palestinian people, including this most unholy and God-forsaken genocide that is carrying on today in Gaza.

So, we’re not as Irish Americans, we’re not just in solidarity with the Palestinian people because we are opposed to occupation, to war and to genocide; we’re in solidarity with them because our families endured that, they suffered that, my grandmother as a girl lived through that.

We also support the right of the Palestinian people to armed resistance, not only because international law and natural law give them that right but because my family fought back, too.

So today, if you see somebody wearing green, you say to them, where’s your keffiyeh?

If they say Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, you say, Free Palestine!

And if they say Erin Go Bragh, Ireland Forever, you say Viva Palestina!

And those Irish Americans, if in their hearts, they are staying true to the principles and beliefs of their ancestors, if in their souls they remember the actions and sacrifices of their families, then they too are in solidarity with Palestine.

And if they are not, well, they just don’t know world history, they don’t know their family history.

So, yes, today, today and always, Ireland Forever.

As well today and always, Viva Palestina! Long Live Palestine!

Palestine’s [time] will come!

Free Palestine!