The scandal raises a number of key issues.
First, many people voted for Eoin Hayes, because of his party’s stance on Israel as well as on other issues. They did not know he held shares in the US company involved in Israeli genocide.
If Hayes had a shred of honour, he would resign his seat. If we lived in a proper democracy, there would be a right to re-call this TD because he lied to his electorate.
Second, Hayes should be expelled from the Social Democrats. Cover-ups by the party should end immediately and they should admit a terrible mistake.
At present Hayes has only been suspended from the parliamentary party and he can be re-admitted after the controversy dies down. The reason given for the suspension is that Hayes did not give the correct information to the media. But surely, the real issue is his investment in genocide.
Third, the Social Democrats have questions to answer about their oversight of candidates. Did they know or even ask if he had shares in Palantir? Did they ask when he disposed of the shares? Why did they do nothing even after press reports revealed that he had these shares?
The Social Democrats have two faces. On one hand it recruits genuinely left-wing activists and deploys a left-wing language. On the other hand, it recruits so-called progressive entrepreneurs like Hayes and says it wants to join Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in coalition.
The Hayes case shows it cannot look both ways at once. It needs to make up its mind. We hope that Hayes is expelled and that the party sheds its ambiguity.
Palantir: A Killer Corporation - Click Here For More.
Eoin Hayes served on the strategy team of Palantir and has never publicly condemned this dreadful corporation.
It was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, a libertarian right winger who is a prominent supporter of Trump and a sponsor of his Vice President, J. D. Vance.
The CIA put up €2 million dollars to create and company with Thiel. Its advisers included Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State and George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director.
Palantir is a software company that has worked closely with the US and Israeli military. Its early software was designed to ‘illuminate terror networks’ in Baghdad.
In more recent times, it has developed Artificial Intelligence to mine data held by Israeli and US intelligence agencies to target Palestinians for killing. Although it never discloses operations, it is believed that Palantir is involved in an Israeli project known as Lavender. According to the +972 magazine, Lavender uses AI machines to draw up lists of thousands of Palestinians for murder by the Israeli army
Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp admitted, “Our product is used on occasion to kill people. He said that ‘the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.”
In October 2023, Palantir took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, reading “Palantir stands with Israel”, and posted on X: “Certain kinds of evil can only be fought with force. Palantir stands with Israel.” In January 2024, Palantir held its board meeting in Tel Aviv in ‘solidarity with Israel’
The notion that Hayes or the Social Democrats did not know what Palantir was up to until recently is simply not tenable.