Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Israel is committing war crimes; there is no doubt about it. It is slaughtering journalists, aid workers, civilians and thousands and thousands of children.

I wish to read a piece from an email I got yesterday from a concerned mother. She wrote:

I took my baby into bed every night while parents in Palestine took their babies into a grave. Please, for the love of God or whoever you believe in, do whatever you can to make the violence in Gaza against innocent men, women and children stop. My heart can't take much more but I won't look away.

We have received literally thousands of emails urging, begging, beseeching us to do everything we can to make the violence stop. That is what this motion and last night's motion are about. We must refer Israel to the International Criminal Court. We cannot be observers; we have to be active participants working hard for a ceasefire. We cannot and must not allow ourselves simply to follow.

I was only a child when Mary Manning refused to handle South African fruit in protest against the apartheid regime in that country. I remind the Minister of State that Amnesty International has classified Israel as an apartheid state. When she refused to handle South African goods, Mary had the support of her colleagues and her union, the Irish Distributive and Administrative Union, IDATU. The Dunnes workers were on the picket line until the Irish Government became the first to ban the importation of South African goods. That was leadership. I ask myself, where is the leadership from the Government today? I see leadership on the streets, where thousands and thousands of us are demonstrating week after week, but we need more leadership from the Government. It must pass the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023. Delaying it is simply not an option.

When I was on the picket line as a child with the Dunnes workers, my father reminded me it was important the victims of apartheid knew we were with them, even though we were far away and even though ours is only a small country. They needed to know we were with them, that we supported them and that we would not look away. The same is true today. As that mother said in her email, "My heart can't take much more but I won't look away." I call on the Minister of State not to look away but to take action, to support both motions and to send those Palestinian children a message of hope and support.

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