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

I thank the Acting Chair. I have to go over to the Dáil shortly for questions but I will be raising Palestine. I thank Deputy Brady for producing the Bill and the IPSC and Sadaka for their ongoing tremendous work in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they face their darkest hour. The campaigning has been going on for many years in both cases and they are to be much commended.

I state our absolute support for the Bill. I hope the Government will not drag its feet on this, put impediments or obstacles in its way, because we have seen that with Senator Black's Bill. Mr. Meehan put it very well when he said that if we have as an Oireachtas declared the settlements are illegal and de facto annexation, there is a complete double standard investing in any way in anything that supports or sustains illegal settlements. He could not have put that more succinctly. It is an unanswerable argument for the Government on this Bill. We should all learn from how succinctly he has put it.

There is only one question really, because I think we are all ad item here on what needs to be done. I will get the witnesses to put it to the Government because I am going to have to run, but what comment do they have to make about the gross double standards our Government, the European Union, the United States and the western international political community are displaying, especially over the past couple of years in this regard? Many of us, including all the witnesses, were calling for sanctions to be imposed on Israel long before the recent genocidal massacre it has inflicted in Gaza due to decades of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, persecution of the Palestinians and refusal to allow the refugees their right under international law to return to their homes and villages. All of that was met with silence by the international community. It has never imposed a single sanction, yet when it came to what was undoubtedly a brutal, unjustified, illegal invasion of Ukraine by Putin the same people who refused and still refuse point-blank to impose any sanction on Israel even in the face of a genocide jumped immediately to support and impose sanctions on Putin. The witnesses' comments on that would be helpful because that is a feeling that is being expressed all across the world. People ask how can we have these double standards and how can the western world claim to champion values of democracy, international law and ethical foreign policy, yet display such absolutely blatant double standards. The witnesses' comments on that would be helpful because the display of those double standards is putting pressure on our Government and the European Union that might help in the campaign to have sanctions imposed on Israel for its crimes.