Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank People Before Profit for bringing forward this motion. Children screaming out the names of the their dead parents, frantic fathers running with their badly wounded children wrapped in their trembling arms, mothers bereft of any emotion looking upon a maze of dead bodies wrapped in blood-soaked sheets while others search in vain for their children entombed under tonnes of rubble and concrete where Gaza has become a mass graveyard of children: this is our daily viewing in our news feeds and on TV. Hospitals, schools, mosques and other places of worship are no longer considered places of protection and sanctuary and are construed to be legitimate targets. The Al-Shifa Hospital was ordered to evacuate the wounded, the sick, the elderly and newborn babies. Where to? Into the abyss? The Al Fakhoura school in the Jabalia refugee camp was bombed and obliterated by Israeli air raids. The massacres go on and on as Israel becomes engulfed in brutal collective punishment and unleashing an insatiable regime of revenge on Gaza and the millions of Palestinians. Once again we hear “Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war”. Medics, doctors, nurses, UN workers, paramedics, journalists, children, everyone and everything has become a target.

It is time to call an immediate and permanent ceasefire on all sides, including Hamas. It is time for UN and Europe to take affirmative action and call for sanctions of the State of Israel. It is time for the Irish Government to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for investigation into alleged war crimes. South Africa has had the courage to do so and so must we. Now is the time to recognise Palestine. Now is the time to enact the occupied territories Bill and stop the illegal plantation by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land. Under law IV of the Geneva Convention the occupying powers power shall not transport its population into territories that it occupies. Now is the time for sanctions and to demand the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement and the Horizon research and development arrangements, which allow Israel to access a fund worth €95 billion. This must be stopped until Israel complies with its human rights obligations.

I will conclude with a quote from a Palestinian from a small village in the West Bank known as Firing Zone 918:

I have tended this land with my family ever since I was a child. Every year I have watched Israeli soldiers and settlers take more of my land, seal our wells, cut water lines, and destroy the roads that connect our village.

This is a daily course of action, tied up by illegal Israeli settlers and backed by the Israel Defense Forces on a so-called military zone, aptly named as a firing zone.

I say to the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, to let our nation be on the right side of world history. Let us never be judged to have stood on the side of tyranny.

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