Ms Jackie Goodall:

I thank the Chair and committee for the invitation to speak this morning. I will introduce Ms Audrey Griffin, who is a member of the Ireland Israel Alliance, and Mr. Alan Shatter, who is also a member and supporter of the organisation. Ms Natasha Hausdorff will speak on behalf of UK Lawyers for Israel.

On behalf of the members of the Ireland Israel Alliance, I offer my deepest condolences to all of those affected by over 1,200 Hamas rockets, and counting, raining down on Israel since Monday, a day when the people of Israel celebrated Jerusalem Day. My condolences not only extend to Israeli citizens – Jews, Arabs and other minorities - but to the many Irish citizens with close family and friends in Israel and also members of the Palestinian communities, thousands of whom work in Israel daily ]to provide a better living for their families and the majority of whom want nothing more than to live in peace.

The Ireland Israel Alliance was established in 2018 because a growing number of Irish citizens were becoming increasingly concerned that the narrative circulating in the Irish public arena regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was disproportionately focused against Israel. Our objective is to bring more balance to that narrative and to make a constructive contribution to the debate. We support a two-state solution and we encourage and support peaceful coexistence between Arabs, Jews and other minorities living within Israel and in the Palestinian territories.

Sadly, however, we continue to witness from certain sectors of society in Ireland a wholly biased anti-Israel narrative. It is to be variously found on our streets and television screens, in our national press and especially on social media, resulting in giving those who wish to see Israel destroyed the oxygen to breed discord and hate. When Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867, he wrote that it was “a ... [desolate] heart-broken land.” Travelling on horseback through the Jezreel Valley he noted there was "not a solitary village throughout its whole extent” and that a person could travel for “ten miles ... and not see ten human beings”.

That said, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for 3,000 years, backed up by extensive and ongoing archaeological evidence. The Jewish people have a deep connection and love for the land from which they were twice exiled. Now back in their ancient homeland, they have always been, and continue to be, willing to share it. However, every single offer of peace so far has been rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

We firmly believe that the existence of Jewish communities within Palestinian areas is not an obstacle to peace, but an opportunity for coexistence and reconciliation. A prime example is Gaza. I visited Israel in 2005 when I witnessed approximately 8,000 Jewish people forcefully removed under the direction of Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in a well-meaning but failed attempt at land for peace. Today, not one single Jewish person lives in Gaza, never mind a Jewish community.

Shortly after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza and its takeover by the internationally recognised terrorist group Hamas, their militants started killing their Palestinian rivals by throwing them off 15-storey buildings and mutilating their bodies in the most barbaric ways.

In addition, greenhouses and irrigation systems left by the departing Gaza Jewish communities were smashed and destroyed.

Do not get me wrong. We are not anti-Palestinian; quite the contrary. Sadly, many of Israel’s enemies are both anti-Israel and anti-Palestinian, because they are more interested in persistent efforts to demonise, delegitimise and socially isolate the sovereign and democratic state of Israel than in trying to improve the lives of the Palestinian people and encourage Palestinian economic development within Palestinian areas.

The Ireland Israel Alliance took a delegation to visit Jewish towns and developments and joint Jewish-Israeli-Palestinian industrial estates in the West Bank and Jordan Valley in 2019. There we witnessed Palestinian and Jewish communities working and studying together and enjoying peaceful and harmonious coexistence. Interestingly, we discovered in a business we visited in the Barkan industrial estate that the manager in charge was a local Palestinian who managed a workforce of both Israelis and Palestinians. The truth is that these communities desperately want peace, an end to the conflict and economic stability.

One of the Jewish families we visited in the Jordan Valley told us they regularly visit Palestinian villages, have Palestinian friends and often attend each other’s family celebrations, including weddings and bar mitzvahs. However, many of these hardworking and peaceful Palestinians are afraid to publicly admit this because of intimidation and harassment from the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian leaders do not need to care about the welfare of Palestinians, because they will use any opportunity to avoid having elections. Palestinian leaders benefit from the dependency of Palestinians on massive external aid which provides opportunities for the diversion of funds to their own pockets, not to mention their notorious “pay for slay” policy that incentivises and rewards the murder of Jewish Israelis. Incitement to violence has long been a favoured tactic of the Palestinian leadership, as we are currently witnessing. When demands for violence using the code "peaceful popular resistance" in the name of protecting Jerusalem are broadcast by Palestinian media, the Palestinian public understands exactly what is required of them.

The Jordan Valley is a vast area and represents the best of Israeli ingenuity. Apart from the Palestinian city of Jericho, the remaining 200,000 acres of desert land were largely vacant until Israelis started developing the region in 1968. Despite the challenges of lack of sufficient water resources and intense heat, it produces a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and is known as a world leader in the Medjoul date market, with 6,200 acres farmed by Israelis and 3,000 acres farmed by Palestinians. In the Barkan industrial zone in the northern West Bank alone, there are some 164 factories employing about 7,200 workers, of whom about 4,000 are Palestinians, many of them in management positions. The employment of Palestinians in Israeli businesses in the West Bank promotes peace and reconciliation through the good relations created between Israelis and Palestinians working together.

In 2018, the Ireland Israel Alliance submitted a report to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence regarding the Occupied Territories Bill, legislation which seeks to boycott Israeli settlements in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. Proponents of the Bill seem to believe that this will promote the prospect of peace in the Middle East and benefit Palestinians. In our view, it would have exactly the opposite effect. Not only that, but a draconian and discriminatory Bill that threatens Irish citizens who trade with Israeli businesses in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem with fines of up to €250,000 and a five-year prison term is hardly the way to encourage good relationships between Israeli people and Irish people. It serves only to cause more suspicion and division.

In the context of the barrage of over 1,200 rockets fired indiscriminately into Israeli civilian territory and the multiple Israeli casualties since Monday, I will finish with a personal story of a visit our delegation took to the Ziv Medical Center in the north of Israel, 11 km from the border with Lebanon and 30 km from Syria. The staff are multi-ethnic, reflecting the wonderful mosaic of people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, including Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bedouin and Druze. This gives the lie to the absurd claim that Israel is an apartheid state. We met the hospital’s general director, Dr. Salman Zarka, himself a Druze, who spoke to us about the unique security challenges the hospital faces.

During the Second Lebanon War of 2006, the hospital took direct hits from Hezbollah missiles while staff continued to treat 1,500 wounded Syrians, sometimes under fire. At the height of the Syrian civil war, the hospital provided unique humanitarian aid to some 5,000 Syrians, many of them unaccompanied children. By 2013, the battle in Syria spread to Israel’s border and the wounded started to arrive. Under international law, it is acceptable to close your border in times of war. However, Israel is known for providing humanitarian aid to people all over the world. The hospital decided to provide medical help to wounded Syrians and set up a field hospital at the border with an intensive care unit. Later, it evacuated them to the Ziv hospital before sending them back to Syria.

Before we left, Dr. Zarka told us that they are praying and hoping for peace but that they have to be ready for war. Dr. Zarka’s comments resonate with everyone I spoke to during our time in Israel, and also with those Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, that I communicate with on a daily basis. The people of Israel, and many Palestinians, are crying out for peace, literally.

I therefore ask members of this committee to ensure that any decisions they make of relevance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or which could detrimentally impact upon Israel do not exclude Ireland from playing a practical role in reigniting a viable peace process and that decisions made by the committee are ones that encourage and promote peace and not division, remembering that truth does not always belong to those who shout loudest.