Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank People Before Profit for bringing forward this motion. We are living through the most horrific times.

In that regard, I am grateful, insofar as one can be, that this Chamber gets to debate what contribution Ireland can make, however small or large, in stopping the depravity that we are watching being inflicted on the human beings in Gaza right now.

Last week, the Social Democrats brought forward a motion, as People Before Profit-Solidarity has done today. In it, we set out a range of measures that we can take, with the support of many thousands of Irish people who are watching television in horror, taking to the streets to demand both a ceasefire and consequences, and writing to our offices to ask that we go further in our actions than we have to this point. We brought it forward because, like those people, we believe that words have lost their meaning and the Irish State should go further and attempt to enact sanctions on the State of Israel for the heinous war crimes it is inflicting upon the Palestinian people, be that in Gaza or the West Bank.

I do not intend to relive that debate in discussing the People Before Profit-Solidarity's motion, but I do wish to place on record my abhorrence at the statement that was sent out from the Tánaiste's party, Fianna Fáil, justifying its continued policy of words over actions. That has continued today in the Tánaiste's statement. Through media appearances and from the party's official social media accounts, Fianna Fáil and its representatives have seen fit to tell others that "this is a crisis that should not be politicised". As the person who proposed the Social Democrats motion, there is nothing more political than the systematic murder of children or what the UN has referred to as an impending genocide, such as is being inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza by the Israeli State. I will make no apologies for doing all that we can to push our Republic into a space where we offer more than harsh words on an international stage without having the requisite courage to go beyond that and call for actual sanctions, be they multilateral or not. That is my preference but that is not going to happen. What we are demanding is that the State go further in its words. We will come to some of the suggestions that have been made in this motion, and other things that we can do.

The Tánaiste said the Irish State is held in high regard internationally. By whom? The bar is extraordinarily low. The US has become not only an apologist for genocide, but an enabler of it. The European Union has lost its integrity. Not only would we show up, but there would be hundreds of thousands of people outside to condemn the words that Ursula von der Leyen has used and the free rein she has given to the slaughter in Gaza. Germany saw fit to make illegal the protests of its own citizens against this slaughter. The world has lost its humanity, yet we hear it said that we are held in high regard and all is fine. We can go further. We fought hard for our Republic and I think we can go further in this respect.

I do not believe for a moment that I or anyone else in the Chamber has a monopoly on compassion or concern for what we are seeing unfold in Gaza and the West Bank. More than that, I acknowledge fully the integrity and the efforts that are being made by the Tánaiste in trying to play his role and do what he believes is the best he can to bring the conflict to a cessation or, at a minimum, bring home our citizens. However, I fundamentally believe that we can go further.

One area where we can go further, which is highlighted well in the motion, is on the issue of apartheid. This Government refused to endorse the findings and recommendations of Amnesty International's 2021 report, Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity. As the Minister of State will undoubtedly know, that report publicly recognised that international crimes against humanity, including the crime of apartheid as defined in the Rome Statue and the apartheid convention, are being committed by Israel against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. As recently as 28 September, I asked the Tánaiste if, on his recent visit to the Middle East, he had used the word "apartheid". The response given was that the Government does not use the term "apartheid". The Tánaiste went on to say that the justification used by the Government was that it felt that the word, in and of itself, was unhelpful.

Ireland has regularly and rightly named a range of human rights violations detailed in the report, including illegal settlements. We have talked about forced evictions and have acknowledged the demolitions, torture, detentions, unlawful killings, etc. What the Government must also do, which it has not done to date, is suggest that these are connected and that the culmination of all of these systematic forms of oppression constitute the crime of apartheid in international law. It was never about phraseology or whether a particular word was helpful. It is a matter of law, and international law is clear that such a system of domination and oppression by one racial group over another constitutes the crime against humanity of apartheid.

Just two months on since we had that conversation, we are talking about very different and even more sinister words, but the Tánaiste and the Government still refuse to use them. I refer to war crimes, international law violations, ethnic cleansing and, most hideous of all, genocide, which is discussed very well in the motion. In the comprehensive diatribe with which the Tánaiste responded, he refused to even used the word "genocide". We know the reason he refuses to use it.

I will give a legal definition of genocide. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as

... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

That constitutes the crime of genocide. Only last week, the Tánaiste visited the Middle East. He went to Egypt, the West Bank and Israel. I share the sentiments expressed by Deputy Paul Murphy in relation to that visit. Can the Tánaiste really avert his gaze and say that what we are witnessing in the region does not constitute the crime of genocide? When we pull away from doing so, it is described as being statesman-like. It is not statesman-like or diplomatic; it is an act of cowardice that basically holds us just slightly above those enabling this genocide. We will not be complicit in it.

There are a number of measures that we could and should take. We should call it for what it is. I still cannot get over that last week a Minister of the Government, Deputy Harris, referred to a war on children, said that peace cannot be built on the graves of children and then saw fit to vote against any sanction for that. The Tánaiste said that we are held in high regard internationally. What will future generations think, when they read about this genocide in decades to come and find that an Irish Minister could use those words and then vote against sanctions? It is unconscionable.

The Minister of State's party, Fianna Fáil, introduced Second Stage of the occupied territories Bill in 2019. One of the phrases used then was "If not now, when?" In response to the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill brought forward by Sinn Féin a few months ago, Deputy Michael McGrath, a Fianna Fáil Minister, said that the Government was looking into the matter to see what it could do in terms of enacting the legislation and that it could take about nine months. If not now, when? The Fianna Fáil Party MEP, Barry Andrews, sought to solicit the support of other members of the party's European group to implement human rights provisions in the EU-Israel trade agreements. Last week and today, Fianna Fáil called us naive for calling for the very same sanctions that the party once stood for. That was when it did not have to stand for them, however. The Government should have the courage to go beyond itself. Words matter.

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