Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no other word for them. Israel has been living with the horror of Hamas on a daily and weekly basis. There is hardly a week goes by that some rockets do not come over and there will be some retaliation. Of course, the pro-Palestinian lobby will not notice the initial atrocity but they will immediately attack Israel for responding. This has been the pattern. It has become a kind of a proxy thing between those who have a left-wing view of life and those of us who do not. There is no denying that. The most recent reaction to the terrible hospital tragedy proves that. Everybody on the left jumped out of their skin to attack Israel for bombing the hospital. It is now becoming clearer every minute that Israel was not responsible. It was Hamas or the jihad who, in a typical way, sent off rockets irresponsibly from a populated area near a hospital and it backfired on them, as one out of every three of their rockets does, by the way. The greatest victims in all of this are the Palestinian people. Palestinian people are victims of Hamas. We, in Ireland, have a proud record of being fair to both sides, and we need to stay that way. I want to compliment the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Government for their mature response to this. They have the support of the Irish people. They can well do without hurlers on the ditch, especially people who, as Senator Craughwell said, are restricted by the Constitution in what they can and cannot say, and seem at this stage - I am talking about Uachtarán na hÉireann - to have thrown all caution to the wind and must-----