Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Dáil allocating time to address the unfolding horror we are seeing in Palestine due to the violence by Israel. It has been several years since I visited the Gaza Strip, but the destruction I witnessed then will never leave me. Gaza is actually an open-air prison. There is the wall that stops any movement, whether that is people coming or people going. People are only permitted to go a few kilometres out to sea. F-16 fighter jets fly overhead regularly and bombs are frequently dropped on sites in the Gaza Strip. I was recently invited to take part in a conference in Ramallah on the great crime of the Nakba.

There is one simple reason why I cannot attend. It is because the apartheid government of Israel has barred me from entering Israel or Palestine. The reason I am barred is because, along with other activists, I was part of a flotilla that was bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. When we were on the boat during that journey, I was taken hostage, along with the other activists, by the Israeli special forces. We were held at gunpoint for a number of hours, until we were brought to the port of Ashdod, where we were then imprisoned for more than a week by the apartheid Israelis. Does that sound like a "vibrant democracy"? Does the Government not challenge the President of the EU Commission's description of the state of Israel? Ursula von der Leyen described Israel as a vibrant democracy that made the desert bloom. It is hard to understand how anybody could stand over that. For an EU official to use such racist tropes and to face no repercussions shows all that is wrong with the Commission.

While I welcome the time the Dáil has allocated to address the brutal system of apartheid that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian people, it does deeply frustrate me that despite how vocal dozens of Members of the Dáil, across all parties, have been on these crimes, we see no action from the Government, bar the odd statement of condemnation. The Tánaiste talks about maintaining a consensus. The difficulty is that the consensus is one that believes Israel is good and Palestinians are bad; that Israel is a friendly state to the EU and that the state of Palestine is not worth backing. That is the reality. The consensus in the EU is that when it comes to Palestine and Palestinians, it is not worth taking a stand for human rights. Human rights breaches happen daily and weekly. The Israeli Minister, Mr. Ben-Gvir, is a racist, who is encouraging the settlers to inflict more and more violence on Palestinians. What will it take for this Government to use its position in Europe and say enough is enough; that it is time to stop arming and empowering an apartheid government?

The EU Commission views Israel as a friend and ally. That is the consensus. Ireland must say that Israel is not a friend. It is not an ally. We must tell Israel and tell the EU that we are going to take an independent stand; that we are not going to go along with the consensus any more. Perhaps it is time the Commission did what any decent friend would do, which is to tell apartheid Israel some home truths. It should tell Israel that it is an apartheid state and that the EU does not want to be friends with a government built on racism and hatred; that the EU will not be friends or allies with a government built on a brutal system of apartheid. It is time to stop this brutality and to start treating Palestinians as equals.

See this speech in context