Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach said that it is not okay for Israel to attack civilians and civilian infrastructure and to threaten to starve the people of Gaza. It most certainly is not okay; it is a war crime. The Israeli Government has brazenly, publicly and openly declared its intention to commit a war crime, and has commenced that war crime against the people of Gaza. It has said it intends to starve 2.2 million people of food, electricity and water. That is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel is raining down thousands of the most sophisticated missiles known to humanity onto the most densely populated area in the world, carrying the certainty that almost every missile will incur civilian casualties, will destroy and is destroying civilian infrastructure, including the water and energy infrastructure, making Gaza uninhabitable, and, according to very credible reports, is using chemical weapons, as it did in the past.

White phosphorous is being used by Israel. The Taoiseach tries to suggest there is some symmetry and equivalence between the actions of Hamas and what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades. Will he admit that the terrible loss of life and escalation of violence that we have seen in recent days is simply a continuation of the crimes against humanity and the war crimes of the State of Israel against the people of Palestine?

It is not me saying this. The Taoiseach has read, or should have read, the reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine and the UN Human Rights Council on the issue of Palestine which we asked him to read and act on. Does he know the Israeli state will not even allow the UN special rapporteur on Palestine or the UN Human Rights Council into the occupied territories because it knows that they will bear witness to the ongoing ethnic cleansing, illegal annexation of territory and arbitrary detention of Palestinians without trial? There is no justice and no sanctions when they assassinate a journalist like Shireen Abu Akleh with impunity. What do we actually get? We get the head of the most powerful state in the world, while Israel is threatening to commit war crimes against Palestine, saying they are going to give them more weapons and arms and they support them absolutely.

Will the Taoiseach admit that the ultimate responsibility for the terrible loss of life, and every single loss of life is terrible, is the failure of the United states, the European Union and the western powers to hold to account Israel for ongoing decades-long ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the denial of the most basic rights to the Palestinian people? As Gideon Levy, a Jewish Israeli columnist, said yesterday, Israel cannot imprison 2 million Gazans without paying a cruel price. Is that not the truth?

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