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

We have four days from the commencement of the truce to stop the resumption of the massacre and slaughter that Israel has told us it is going to resume as soon as that truce expires. The question to the Government is what it or the international community are going to do to prevent the resumption of the massacre and slaughter that Netanyahu, his ministers and his military commanders have said they are going to resume against the people of Gaza, which has already cost the lives of 14,000 people, including 6,000 children, and led to the ethnic cleansing of 1.7 million people. What are they going to do about it? We have four days.

The Minister of State has still not come back on the point I made to him and we have had no response from the Government. To repeat, under the genocide convention, the Government has an obligation to do everything to prevent it, not to punish afterwards. The Government keeps going on about the ICC but that is about holding them accountable for crimes committed. The genocide convention requires and obligates states to take all measures to prevent the commission of genocide if they reasonably believe a genocide may take place or if there is incitement towards genocide.

Then we have the deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament saying "burn Gaza". He said that this week. He said "We are too humane. Burn Gaza ...". Netanyahu described the Gazans as Amalek. This is a reference to the Hebrew bible and the Israelites' injunction to slaughter men, women, children and animals - all of them. It is a biblical reference and everybody in Israel knows what it means. We have Gallant saying the Gazans are "human animals". They have said they will bring only destruction. We have Ben-Gvir on television this week saying the Israelis should not give the Gazans water and that he wanted all of them to get lice. This is sick. We have TV presenters in Israel saying on national television they are going to destroy all the Palestinians, that they are going to come after Lebanon and come after anybody who even shows sympathy with the Palestinians in the West. There is a multitude of evidence from the Israeli military and Government saying they are going to commit genocide. We have evidence of genocide and all the genocide experts, academics, the UN commission and the UN special rapporteur are all saying what we are looking at is an intention to commit genocide and asking what we are going to do about it. Is the Government going to act, as it is required to do, to do everything to deter it? I will just read what the ICJ said on this:

a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent ... [to commit genocide] it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit.

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