Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Any one of the 153 states party to the Genocide Convention could have brought a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. South Africa is the only country to take this moral and principled stand and Ireland should join its genocide case against Israel. In the emergency hearing on Thursday, 11 January the legal team acting for South Africa set forth its case, aided in no small part by the obviously genocidal and dehumanising rhetoric coming from senior Israeli Government officials calling for the total destruction and erasure of Gaza, the need to finish them off and force Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and into Jordan.

Since mid-November, a large group of independent United Nations human rights experts have warned of a genocide in the making in Gaza and called for all countries to mobilise the international genocide prevention system. The UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator says Gaza has simply become "uninhabitable" while the world watches. It seems that is exactly what this Government intends on doing, as it stands idly by watching while thousands more innocent Palestinians are killed. The death toll now being reported is exceeding 25,000 since 7 October. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, who unfortunately is not here, recently spoke about seeing on TV and social media feeds horrific civilian deaths, including of children, mass displacement and destruction and entirely inadequate access for the UN and international organisations to provide vital humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. He has said we will judge when an intervention is warranted and we will submit one. The Government has not made an intervention so far, therefore it must not judge an intervention is warranted. I ask the Tánaiste and the Government how much evidence is needed before they judge an intervention is warranted. It is absolutely ridiculous.

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