Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has blood on her hands. She has the blood of over 6,500 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and bombardment over the past two weeks on her hands. She has the blood of over 2,700 children on her hands. She should resign, and if the Government seriously represented justice, peace and opposition to genocide, it would demand at the European Council that she goes.

She went to Israel with no mandate and declared that Israel has the right to defend itself without any conditions. We have all witnessed what that right to defend itself means. It means more bombs being rained down on the people of Gaza, which is effectively an open-air concentration camp of 2 million people. More bombs have been rained down in the space of two weeks than were rained down on Afghanistan over the course of a year. It means a conscious attempt to starve the people of Gaza, children included, of water, food and electricity. It means a conscious attempt, that it will try to implement, to drive people out of Gaza and enforce a new Nakba, at least in the northern half of Gaza if not in Gaza as a whole. That is what the right of Israel to defend itself meant and that is what the President of the European Commission endorsed. The president should now go.

It is clear that the EU is not going to act against Israel. It is clear that the EU, in fact, supports the policies of apartheid Israel. That is clear in what it is doing now, whereby it refuses to call out the war crimes or condemn the ethnic cleansing being committed by Israel. It refuses to do what President Ursula von der Leyen was very clear about what we must do in terms of Russia, namely call it as such - cutting off men, women and children from water, electricity and heating are acts of pure terror. She was very clear about Russia, but refuses to say the same in respect of Israel. This is not something that the EU has stumbled upon.

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The truth is that this is exposing the reality of what EU policy in the Middle East has been. It is a few crocodile tears for Palestinians who are killed, a little bit of money for aid and then it is massive support for the Israeli apartheid state. There is preferential access for Israel into the EU market. The EU-Israel association agreement is worth almost €50 billion per year. Many people do not know that Israeli companies are able to access European public money through research funding like the Horizon 2020 programme. Israeli companies are able to get access to European money. It is not just any Israeli companies but Israeli arms companies that are getting this access. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two largest armaments companies making some of the weapons and some of the bombs that are raining down on the people of Gaza, are in receipt of European funding. So much for the EU's commitment to human rights and democracy.

The EU is not going to act, so therefore the Irish Government has to act if its words of sympathy for the Palestinians are to mean anything. We have heard banal, trite excuses from the Taoiseach as to why we should not expel the Israeli ambassador. He said the other day that "Being absolutist on one side or the other removes our influence". Surely we should be absolutist against genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. If the Irish Government was to do what I think the majority of people in Ireland want to see happen, it would kick out the Israeli ambassador. It would kick out this woman who tells lies on our media all the time. She says Israel has the right to bomb hospitals. We should kick out this woman who attacks our President and accuses him of misinformation because he tells the truth about the breaching of the Geneva Convention. If we were to kick out this embassy, which has a deputy head of mission who accuses Ireland of funding Hamas tunnels, it would have a big impact. It would send a signal around the world that when von der Leyen gave the green light to this genocide, she was not speaking on behalf of all the people of Europe. It would send a signal to the Palestinian people that we stand in solidarity with them. It would send a signal of strong condemnation to the Israeli regime.

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