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

Deputy Brady and I requested at the Business Committee that we would have this debate on Amnesty International’s utterly damning report that Israel is a state that is operating a system of apartheid and that in doing so it is committing crimes against humanity. It called for sanctions to ensure that inhumane and inhuman system is dismantled.

We called for this debate prior to the barbaric invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. All of us have rightly condemned the crimes against humanity that are being committed by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. The Government moved instantly - within five days - to sanction Putin’s regime and take urgent action. The strength of language that was rightly used against Putin denounced him as a barbarian, thug and warmonger, all of which are true. All of those things apply to the state of Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians and yet the Government is concerned about its use of language and does not feel it is appropriate to use the word “apartheid” when Amnesty International, the most respected human rights organisation in the world, and Human Rights Watch, within a short period of time issued these damning reports. Those reports have said that since its foundation Israel has been built on a system of oppression, domination, apartheid and racism, involving the murder of unarmed and innocent civilians on a regular basis. It also features arbitrary detention and imprisonment; land annexation; the displacement of people; and the denial of fundamental rights to 6 million Palestinians who are displaced outside of Israel in the occupied territories, including the right to return to their homes. The illegal blockade of Gaza , as is said in the report, has left Gaza in a permanent state of humanitarian crisis. People are denied access to food and water and the Arab and Palestinian population as a whole is treated as an inferior race.

Language does not get stronger than this yet the Minister wants to be careful about his language. The Minister is happy to correctly use the most strong and robust language to describe the crimes against humanity of Vladimir Putin but he will not use the same strength of language when it comes to describing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians when it is being documented and detailed by two of the most respected human rights organisations in the world. This has been alleged by dozens of NGOs and can be seen by anybody who looks honestly at the decades of brutal and inhumane persecution of the Palestinians, the successive assaults on Gaza, the annexation of the land and territory and the systematic application of apartheid rules. The Minister does not want to even use the word “apartheid”, never mind bring in sanctions. It took five days for sanctions against Putin and his thugs but imposing sanctions for 70 years of oppression of the Palestinians would not be “helpful”. Amnesty International is calling for Israel to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Will the Government support that? It is calling for targeted sanctions against Israeli officials who are perpetuating the system of apartheid. These are the exact same type of sanctions the Government has just initiated against Vladimir Putin. Will the Government support this? The clear answer is that the Government will not.

Why is that? There is such strength of feeling about this. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party Deputies stood up one after the other saying that the thuggery, warmongering and brutality of Putin are intolerable. They would not stand for it and they demanded that urgent action be taken but we have to be much more careful with the Palestinians and their treatment. I do not even have time to go into the briefing I organised this week on the people of Yemen and how Saudi Arabia, the most despotic regime in the world which has been armed to the teeth by the United States, Britain France and others, has killed 337,000 people there in the past five years, including 10,000 children. Will there be any action against the United States, Britain or France for arming it or will there be any action against Saudi Arabia itself? No. There will be no action, sanctions or outrage, only words of concern. We will raise it and call on them to do things.

If the Government is going to have moral standards then they have to be consistent. Otherwise they are not standards at all; they are just cynicism. We all know the reason the standards are not consistent. It is that to call out the apartheid state of Israel would be to run foul of the concerns of certain states that are presenting themselves as defenders of democracy and so on, such as the United States, the UK, Germany and other powers. Their relationship with and support and backing for Israel mean that the EU’s moral credentials are bankrupt.

It is not willing to take the action. We go along with that. That is not acceptable. I appeal to the Minister to uphold the tradition this country has, going back its foundation, of opposing oppression of peoples and standing up against brutal powers that are willing to subjugate people such as the Palestinians or any others.

Show some moral backbone. Show some consistency and support the motion we have circulated to every Deputy in this House, which Sinn Féin, a number of the left Independents and People Before Profit have now signed, calling for the adoption of the recommendations of the Amnesty International report and for the sanctions it recommends that must follow. Will the Minister support those things? If he does not, all the words of concern and raising of the issue will mean nothing to the Palestinian people.

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