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

On Saturday, I was a participant in an online international event organised by the Rohingya people in solidarity with Gaza. Among others, there were numerous academics and experts in attendance, including many Jewish people who were expert in the area of genocide. They, along with many others, including many representatives of the Jewish population worldwide, are rightly describing what Israel is doing in Gaza as an act of genocide. Israel is engaged in brutal, horrific, barbaric, systematic and deliberate massacres of more than 10,500 Palestinians, about 70% of them women and children, and it has declared its clear intention to continue indefinitely. When will we realise that these are not the actions of a normal state or actions of self-defence?

When we describe them as war crimes and genocidal assaults, we also hear the words of Israeli politicians and military personnel as they publicly admit that they will commit things that fit all the definitions of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, is worth quoting because you would not get these words from the leaders of any normal state. On 9 October he said:

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed... We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.

On 10 October Gallant toured southern Israel and said, "I have released all the restraints, we have [regained] control of the area, and we are moving to a full offense".

On 10 October, Major General Ghassan Alian, head of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories for Israel said:

Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.

International organisations have stated that Israeli forces used white phosphorus chemical weapons in military operations in Gaza on 10 and 11 October. On 21 October, Israel's military dropped leaflets on northern Gaza with the following words: "Whoever chooses not to leave north Gaza to the south of Wadi Gaza might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organisation." There is a declaration of two war crimes in that. First, there is clear intent for the forcible transfer of the entire population of Gaza city civilians. That is a war crime under occupation. Second, they make clear that they will no longer - not they ever did so - make distinctions between civilians and combatants, which is a war crime. They state it publicly and then they do it.

Even though everybody in this House has rightly called for a ceasefire, and that is better than most countries, I want to put it to the Minister of State that even now, the Government is giving succour to the Israeli narrative in the language that is being used to describe the actions on various sides. Again and again, the Government refers to the events of 7 October and the Hamas attack as "barbaric and savage massacres". However, when it comes to the actions of Israel, where the number of victims are nearly ten times what happened on that date, the language is completely different. We talk about disproportionality. We do not talk about massacres and we do not call it barbaric or savage; we say it is disproportionate. We appeal to Israel to act within the parameters of international law when it is clearly not doing so and we talk in the passive tense. It is not Israel that is doing it but it is sort of happening by itself. The Taoiseach mentioned how the large number of children that have been killed or that have witnessed the death of their parents and other family homes is disturbing etc. He uses the passive tense. He does not say "Israel is slaughtering men, women and children; will they stop this slaughter". These double standards in how we are treating the two sides of this conflict, when Israel has the upper hand in every respect, is more of the problem that gives licence to Israel to continue the slaughter.

It is not a normal state. It is a state built on the ethnic cleansing and the denial of rights for Palestinians for decades and until we recognise that and begin to do what we did with apartheid South Africa, this bloody horror will not end.

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