On 21 March, 2026, Northern Irish peace activists organized an anti-militarism and anti-war march in their Belfast, known for both The Titanic, the Hollywood-immortalized epic story, and the sectarian violence between the Catholic and Protestant communities further fuelled by London’s neo-imperialist British government.

FORSEA is proud to share Mairead Maguire’s impassioned and powerful call for a non-violence alternative to the US-Israel-led militarism and wars of aggression in Iran, Palestine and Lebanon, and genocides in Gaza and in Myanmar. She is the co-founder of the grassroots peace movement known as Peace People and serves as a member of the FORSEA Board.

Mairead (82) knows the tragic and devastating consequences of violence and militarism first hand. At the height of the Troubles – as the violent sectarian conflicts were referred to by the locals – in the early 1970’s, Mairead lost her older sister and her 3 little children – one in the buggy – in an incident that involved a suspected IRA member driving his car near their home and the British Army troops. Mairead’s sister was simply going about her daily business of walking on a sidewalk with her 3 children when they were hit by a speeding car whose driver was already killed by a British bullet. (See her bio and interview on Israel’s genocide in the backgrounder).

Some years ago, when she was less frail, she and her long-time friend Anne Patterson travelled together to different war-torn places, including Iran, occupied Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and Bangladesh to meet with ordinary war-and genocide-effected communities.

Anne Patterson speaking at an event on Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingyas hosted by Peace People House in Belfast, with the organization’s Chair, Gerry Greham (to her left) looks on, April 2018 (Photo courtesy of the Peace People House).

During their travels across Iran, she met Iran people on the streets, in shops, in universities who expressed their pervasive fear: the Americans will bomb our country.

Mairead said, “We told them, ‘no, they won’t. But they did, they Do, and they are doing it’.”

Watch Mairead’s address to the rally in front of the US Consulate General in Belfast.

 

Mairead travelled to the West Bank as a guest of the Palestinian leader the late Yasar Arafat. To honour his memory, she usually wears his personal gift, a hand-tailored traditional Palestinian jacket.

She also paid a visit to Mordechai Vanunu, the Arab Jewish Israeli whistleblower of Israel’s program nuclear weapons in Dimona, the site Iranian hypersonic missiles hit Saturday, in direct retaliation for US-Israel bombing of the Iranian civil nuclear site at Natanz the day before.

(From left to right), an un-known-gentlemen, Mordechai Vanunu, Mairead Maguire and Anne Patterson, Jerusalem, (circa. 2005) (photo taken of the photo on the wall at Peace People House, by Zarni, Dec. 2023)

Watch: https://www.facebook.com/reel/3113360475513636

Watch an Iranian woman film her own death. A prominent Iranian American scholar Trita Parsi wrote on his Facebook wall, “Some Iranians in the diaspora dance and celebrate this, believing these are democracy bombs….”
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17QFgdQyLy/

Maung Zarni 

Backgrounder:

“Israel Cannot Build Peace on Genocide” says 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, 17 Dec. 2023
https://forsea.co/israel-cannot-build-peace-on-genocide-says-1976-nobel-peace-laureate-mairead-maguire/

$200 Billion For The Pentagon Means A Longer War and More Wasted Funds
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2026/03/19/200-billion-for-the-pentagon-means-a-long-war-and-wasted-funds/

“BRAZEN Aggression!” Norman Finkelstein vs Jonathan Conricus On Israel-Lebanon Operation + Iran War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNcyU4YSp3w&t=915s

Lawrence Wilkerson: U.S. Strategic Defeat in Iran Will Reshape the World
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/lawrence-wilkerson-us-strategic-defeat

Israel’s Collapse Is Nearing
Israel’s pre-emptive war against Iran has made it naked how Israel is imploding from within
https://mandissent.com/p/israels-collapse-is-nearing?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1229429&post_id=191660747&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=7gw7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The Future of the War With Iran (w/ Max Blumenthal)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPS0BUko8d8

Popular Resistance by Professor Mazin from Palestine
https://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2026/03/48-hours-and-what-you-can-do.html

Posted by Maung Zarni

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide. He is the co-author (with Natalie Brinham) of the pioneering study, "The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas" (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, Spring 2014) and "Reworking the Colonial-Era Indian Peril: Myanmar’s State-Directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims" (The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall/Winter 2017/18).

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