Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the ambassador. He mentioned that the Israeli Defence Force tried to avoid the deaths of innocent people. That does not add up when one considers that the hospital was bombed and that UN centres where people were advised to go to seek refuge were bombed and innocent people lost their lives. He refers to that as high moral standards. I radically disagree with that.

I also refer to the ambassador's concluding sentence in regard to the correspondence, e-mails, letters and the contacts made with his office. With all due respect to the ambassador and to the office of any ambassador to our country, I believe that I or any other Member of the Oireachtas would receive mail, correspondence and contacts from constituents and from people throughout the country that would be more representative of the views of the people of Ireland than what an embassy would receive. The correspondence I received regarding the desperate behaviour and savage attacks on innocent people showed that people abhorred the attacks on innocent people in Gaza.