Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will start by quoting the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charles Flanagan, who this summer stated while Israel was bombing the living daylights out of Gaza:

The horror has not been confined to the Palestinian side only. Millions of Israelis have been forced to seek shelter on a daily basis from the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel. Some 55 Israelis, of whom the vast majority have been IDF personnel, and one Thai national have died.

As it turns out, only three Israelis were killed in Israel by the "toy rockets" that Hamas was firing in the other direction. Some 2,100 people were killed in Gaza, 500 of whom were children. We had little to say about it.

On a different occasion during the summer, the Minister stated:

The blockade of Gaza must be ended. So too must the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and other militants, including Islamic Jihad and also the building of tunnels for the purpose of attacking Israelis. Hamas must renounce violence as a means of achieving its political objectives.

This is the fourth largest army in the world attacking the poorest nation on the planet.

The Minister, in his defence a couple of weeks ago when we argued for recognition of the Palestinian state, stated that it needed to be remembered that recognition of any state would not bring peace to the region. He was right, but he did not add that the reason Israel could carry out genocide to the extent that it does in Gaza was because the US let it do so and supported it without qualm.

People might forget but, in 1948, the Jews expelled, massacred, destroyed and raped in Palestine. As a result of that campaign, 500 Palestinian villages and 11 urban neighbourhoods were destroyed. Some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled and several thousand were massacred. It is called "genocide". Things have not changed much since. The US has unreservedly supported genocide in Gaza. Since we allow the US military to use Shannon as a military base to do whatever it feels like in the Middle East, to carry arms to the Middle East and to carry reinforcements to the Israelis, we are complicit.

The latest revelations concerning the CIA torture dossier - although the US Senate has only revealed 500 pages of a 6,000-page document, fair play to it for doing so - will hopefully bring our Government to the point of examining our role in what has transpired in the Middle East during the past 15 years. We need an inquiry into who authorised Shannon to be used as a US military base. It is nothing short of a disgrace. We have been so silent, it is frightening. That the new Minister was silent this summer and spent more time giving out about Hamas than he did about what the Israelis were doing to Palestinians in Gaza beggars belief.

I just met a man on the street who told me that he had heard people claiming there were only 30,000 people at today's protest. He added that he would like to see them try to get all of those protesters into Croke Park, which can hold 80,000, because they would not be able to. Some 250,000 attend the St. Patrick's Day parade. He told me that he had attended most of those parades but that today's protest was bigger.

The Government is on its last legs. The sooner it realises it, the better. The people have seen enough of it.

See this speech in context