Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While I welcome the attention that is rightly being focused on Ukraine, we must not forget the genocide that is being perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinian people. I support the calls for the Russian ambassador to be expelled, but the Israeli ambassador should have been expelled a long time ago.

There have been double standards on the part of many, not least some members of Kildare County Council, which recently unanimously requested the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to expel the Russian ambassador. The same council in May 2017, albeit with some different members, refused to support the flying of the Palestinian flag to express solidarity with the people of Palestine, who have endured continuing crimes of apartheid committed by Israel.

I was shocked last week to see that Yoseph Haddad had been given a platform within the grounds of our national Parliament. Mr. Haddad had stated he travelled to Ireland to fight against the lies of the recent Amnesty International report. The report is the latest evidence of Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people following the Human Rights Watch report of last year. Mr. Haddad has praised Israel's attack on Palestinian civil society, including the classing of six NGOs as terrorist groupings and the shoot-to-kill tactics used by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank. My instinct was not to attend his appearance but I could not let his propaganda go unchallenged. My presence obviously irked Mr. Haddad because he tried to misrepresent me on Facebook by claiming I had asked him what he thought of the UN. In fact, I had asked him why the Israeli Government has such contempt for international law, given it is in breach of almost 50 UN resolutions. Almost half of all country-specific resolutions have been about Israel.

If there had been time, I would also have asked Mr. Haddad how, as a Christian Arab, he can condone the murder of children, the targeting of vulnerable adults such as Muhammad Al-Ajlouni and the deliberate targeting of Palestinian olive groves and other sources of income, which to the people of Ireland looks very much like ethnic cleansing. I would also like to have asked him what his response was to the call by the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem at the end of last year when they said the authorities had failed to curb assaults against Christians and the desecration of their sites.

Mr. Haddad and his ilk will no doubt paint me as antisemitic, as they do to anyone who challenges the Israeli narrative. It is not antisemitic to call out evil deeds perpetrated by the Israeli regime, not all of whom are Jewish. We must hate the sin, not the sinner.

See this speech in context