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

I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this motion. Shame on the United States, shame on Britain, shame on the European Union and shame on this Government for continuing to give Israel impunity while it carries out a genocide and a massacre on the people of Gaza.

On 18 October, Solidarity-People Before Profit put forward an amendment to a Government motion on Gaza where we asked for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, for sanctions against Israel and for Israel's referral to the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Only Solidarity-People Before Profit Party Deputies, together with Deputy Pringle and Deputy Joan Collins, rose to support that motion. It is really a shame on this House that it has taken for the death toll of Palestinians to rise to more than 11,000, of which victims 5,000 are children and 70% are women and children, for this issue to come before the House again. Even now, in the face of what is self-evidently a genocide and massacre by Israel of the Palestinians, the Government continues with, frankly, its studied contempt of the plight of the Palestinians. Why have we not had a senior Minister in here for the debate last night or today?

That is deliberate. People need to understand what is going on. It is a deliberate attempt by the Government to distance itself from its refusal to impose sanctions on Israel for the massacre and the genocide that is taking place. It is absolutely clear that this is what is going on. How do we know it is a massacre and a genocide? The Israelis told us they were going to do it. Their ministers told us they were going to starve the entire Palestinian population of water, electricity, food and medical supplies, and punish them all. They described them as human animals; the classic dehumanisation which is the prelude to every single genocide that has ever taken place, where the President of Israel said all Palestinians were responsible. Israel told us what it was going to do and it has done it.

The Government - including, sadly, those who are speaking up for the Palestinians - persists with the narrative that this is somehow an act of self-defence by Israel. However, all of this did not begin on 7 October. It has been going on since 1948. The founders of the Israeli state made it absolutely clear that they were going to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the word go and that is what they have done since 1948. They did it again in 1967 and again and again. They were doing it all of this year, long before 7 October. Netanyahu stood in front of the UN in September with a map that erased all reference to Palestine. They made it clear. Netanyahu said earlier this year that there would be no Palestinian state. In March 2023, Smotrich said that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people. This was the deadliest year for Palestinians in years, before anything happened on 7 October.

Human rights organisations, the Palestinians and people in this House have pleaded for the past three years for people to take action and end the impunity of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Government failed to act. Frankly, it has blood on its hands for what has happened since because of its failure to act against Israel. Israel is not a normal state. A state that is built on ethnic cleansing, on apartheid and on the day in, day out, killing of Palestinians with impunity has no right to self-defence. It has none. You do not have the right to defend an illegal occupation, or apartheid, or years of ethnic cleansing. The only people who have the right to defend themselves are Palestinians and that is even under international law, never mind morality. However, still the Government gives Israel impunity and allows it to continue this massacre when it is absolutely clear what it is engaged in is the use of terrorism to terrify the entire Gaza population and drive them out. It is doing it on the West Bank where there is no Hamas either and its ministers have declared it publicly.

We need the people to do what Governments have failed to do. This is why I urge people to get out on the streets tonight outside the Dáil before this vote. I commend the 13,000 people who sent in emails in the last few days calling for sanctions. I want to see people out on the streets this Saturday as part of a global mass movement that is demanding we finally acknowledge that Israel is no normal state; it is an apartheid state and a terrorist state. It is a state built on the mass expulsion and murder of Palestinian people. It is only when we dismantle the horrific regime that we will end the terror and massacre we are now witnessing.

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