Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. I thank him for his patience and listening. I wish him well in his new role as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.

It is good to be here today. I was one of the people who supported the recall of the Seanad. Many people asked what we can do and if we can make a difference. We only have to recall the bravery of those few young girls in Dunnes Stores in the early 1980s when they opposed apartheid. They were at the Galway Fleadh last week.

They are now grown, mature women and were heralded for their leadership. Leadership is critical in this case. Following the downing of flight MH17, the European Union has decided to impose further sanctions on Russia in respect of its support for rebels in Ukraine. However, it has refused to impose any sanctions on Israel. This is wrong. Both conflicts deserve a similar Irish and European response. Ireland's abstention in the recent UN Human Rights Council vote was regrettable and weak. There was an opportunity to show leadership and to step out from the EU group. Concerns over the wording of the resolution were not a valid reason for Ireland to fail to do the right thing and vote for it. Desmond Tutu said that if one is neutral in situations of injustice, one has chosen the side of the oppressor. This is, in effect, what the European Union did and Ireland was complicit. The indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas is no justification for the wanton death and destruction inflicted by the Israeli military on people living in Gaza in the past few weeks.
I have been fortunate to have a number of friends who do business in Israel and I have thought that to bring balance to the story by getting an objective account from those with eye-witness and first-hand accounts. I note what one friend who does business in Israel told me. To confirm what Senator Sean D. Barrett said, Israel is a thriving economy and a leader in the Middle East in that sense. My friend says he is uncomfortable with the Israeli response to the missiles from Gaza. He earns his living there. He notes that the technology used by the Israelis is highly sophisticated and that the Gazans have no hope of inflicting any significant damage. Most of their missiles appear to be filled with fertilizer, which can cause only limited damage and that is only where they manage to hit targets which most seem incapable of, whereas the Israelis respond with two TNT missiles with the benefit of radar for every Hamas missile. These cause significant damage by comparison. The fact that Gaza is the most densely populated area on earth further compounds the human carnage and damage. We know the stories of the school playgrounds and the emergency unit that shook recently. I was really touched by the eye-witness account of Rudhán Mac Cormaic in The Irish Timeswhen he was asked about the whereabouts of 11 children who were playing in the playground. He was told "Go down to the fridges [in the morgue] and you’ll find about 11 kids – all killed".
The civilian death toll tells us who the main victims are in the conflict. Most of them are innocent Palestinian men and women. To revert to eye-witness accounts, it is not fair that all the inhabitants should have to suffer in this way. There are 1.8 million inhabitants in the Gaza strip. I have no idea how many of them are engaged in militant activity, but the blockades in place for years must be lifted. Contrary to what Senator Paul Bradford said, it seems like the Israelis want to wipe out the Gazans. They want a genocide. I was struck by what Senator Bradford said because he spoke about the fear of the Israelis of being wiped out. Deep in the psyche of the Jews, the abused is becoming the abuser. It is a really dangerous psyche and it must be worked through. This is why the situation deserves careful handling. At that level, we must reach out for a different type of negotiation. We are seeing Gazans being completely wiped out. These are trapped people. They are enslaved by the Israelis. To get in and out of their country, they must seek permission. They are not independent and sovereign. They have no access to water or fuel. They are totally reliant on the Israelis. I regret the little time I have been given no more than many others. To broker this peace, we must be careful that we do not cause another genocide. Rwanda happened because the UN did not act quickly enough and it did not listen.

It has taken the deaths of three teenagers to cause an all-out war in Gaza. That is dangerous. I implore the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to lead for Ireland in the European Union for a different kind of brokerage, one which will understand the psychological underpinnings of the Israeli mindset and which will eliminate the atrocities taking place among the Palestinians in the Gaza community.