Black Mountain, which looms above West Belfast, acts as a blank canvas for Irish republicans to plaster their thoughts across. Over the years, banners covering a range of subjects, from Irish unity to Brexit, have been draped across it. In recent days, a Palestinian flag was placed there by a group styling itself Gael Force Art, claiming it was in ‘solidarity with the Palestinian people who launched their biggest operation in fifty years against the rogue state of Israel’. Gerry Adams shared a picture of the flag on Twitter/ X. ‘The Mountain Speaks! Free Palestine,’ he wrote.
Irish republicanism has always been a reliable well-spring of support for their Palestinian equivalents. In the Troubles, PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) sympathetic graffiti would occasionally jockey for attention with similar pledges of support for the Basque terrorists ETA on the walls of the Falls Road. In recent years, messages of support for Hamas have appeared alongside so-called street art supporting dissident republican terrorists.
For some Irish republicans, their cause has much in common with that of the Palestinians.
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