James Heffernan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree with some of the previous contributions that the decision for Ireland to abstain from the UN vote on a commission of inquiry into Gaza last week was in the best interests of both Ireland and the European Union and how the member states of the European Union should stand together in matters of foreign policy. I shudder when I hear this type of rhetoric coming from Members, especially from the Government side. Is the reason we joined the European Union to be silenced? We are a sovereign nation, one which has past experiences of occupation, famine and war. We are a relatively new, young and small nation on the periphery of Europe. A nation without a voice, however, we are not. A nation without a conscience, we are not.

We all know the murder of civilians, in particular children, is always wrong. One child every hour is being murdered in Gaza. At 5 a.m. frightened boys and girls huddled with their parents in a UN-protected girl’s elementary school. The Israeli authorities were informed 17 times that the school was full of refugees, but seven and a half hours after they received the last warning, the bombs started to fall on the school with no warning, leaving 19 dead, hundreds maimed and more wounded. In anyone’s language, that is a war crime. Israel must be made to account for this.

Will the Minister highlight Ireland’s disgust at what is going on? He stated the Irish ambassador to Israel, Mr. Eamonn McKee, had a lengthy meeting with the Israeli foreign ministry, where he again made clear the Government's grave concerns and our particular appeal that there should be no escalation of the military campaign under way, as well as the need for all violence to cease forthwith. What was Israel’s response? Some 16,000 army reservists have been called up. Israel has no notion of ending this conflict.

This is not the first time we have been ignored. This goes back to 2010 when the leader of the military wing of Hamas was murdered in a Dubai hotel room by agents working on behalf of the Israeli state. Three of those agents were carrying Irish passports at the time. When the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Garda investigated this incident, it came to the inescapable conclusion that Israel was responsible for the forged passports and that this put Irish citizens at risk. The Department noted Israel did not assist in this country’s investigations but did not deny any involvement either. We are against extrajudicial summary execution. Israel, however, does not seem to be bound by any laws. If it will ignore us in this fashion, I do not see the point in having an ambassador to the Israeli state.

I support calls to recall our ambassador there and to cut diplomatic ties. No country in Europe has been brave enough to do this yet while other countries have. As Senator John Whelan said, we cannot take our lead from the European Union, the United Kingdom or the United States. We are our own nation. Let us stand and be counted as our own nation.

I do not condone the firing of rockets into Israel but I want to put on the record of the House that Israel has a very sophisticated missile defence system called the Iron Dome. Senator Paul Bradford accused this nation of having a very unbalanced view. There are 1,200 people dead in Gaza while 53 Israeli solders and three Israeli citizens have died. To me, that is unbalanced. It is genocide. The Israelis are trying to bomb the Gazans into the sea. Israel in this war is acting like a rogue state. It is waging an unimaginable war of terror against the people of Gaza.