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

The first thing I want to do is say that tomorrow at 5.30 p.m. a demonstration organised by anti-war and Palestine solidarity groups including Mothers Against Genocide, The Anti-war Movement, the Union of Students in Ireland, Irish Palestine Solidarity and many others will be assembling at the European Commission offices on Mount Street to march to Leinster House. They will be calling once again on the Government to take the opportunity to do what it should have done when it was first asked in November, to discharge its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention to act to prevent genocide.

No matter how much the Government attempts to obfuscate the complex legal character of joining the case versus intervening in the case, that is all nonsense. The convention was drawn up to prevent genocide. All signatories to the Genocide Convention are required - as soon as they are put on notice that a genocide may be under way - to act and do everything in their power to prevent the commission of genocide. That is what the signatories are required to do. What has Ireland done to prevent the commission of genocide, to deter Israel from continuing what the world court has now said is a prima faciecase of genocide against Israel for the massacre it has conducted in Gaza in front of the eyes of the world? The court made very clear that Israel has committed some of the acts alleged. Its job is to then look at the evidence and say if it constitutes genocide. It has accepted that it might. Once this is possible and the court has put countries on notice that a genocide is possibly taking place, because it is not in a position to make a final adjudication, we can all look at it and say that it is obvious that it fits the definitions of genocide. We look at the barbaric incitement of Israeli ministers, the prime minister, generals and officials. They have said things like "we are going to burn Gaza". They have called Palestinians animals and Amalekites. They have cut off food, water and electricity and bombed schools, hospitals and water infrastructure, and assassinated people in the street who were carrying white flags. They have been told to move en masse - which is ethnic cleansing - to safe areas and then they have bombed the safe areas. It just goes on. What does the world do? Nothing.

It is very important to say, and this will relate to the issue about going to Washington and so on, once you have been put on notice that a genocide may be taking place, if you assist in acts that may then be genocide subsequently, you are complicit with those acts. Other people should be in the frame and indeed it might be a case we should taking about the complicity of the United States, Britain and states that are continuing to arm Israel. They are sending them the missiles to rain down death and destruction on men, women and children. Biden boosted the $3 billion annual subsidy the United States gives to Israel mostly for weapons, mostly to kill Palestinians, to $14 billion when Israel said it was going to attack Gaza. They are complicit. They should be in the Hague as well for war crimes.

Are we seriously going to go over and shake hands with somebody who is proactively and enthusiastically arming a state that is now in the dock for a genocide that we can see in front of our eyes? Are we seriously going to gladhand them on our national day? I say this to all members of the Government and our colleagues in Sinn Féin and anybody else who is considering it. When Bernadette McAliskey was given the freedom of New York City, she went over to America alright but she gave the key to the city to the Black Panthers, because it was during the time of the civil rights movement. She stood with the oppressed who were being beaten down by the American Government at the time. That is the tradition we should be standing in. We should be standing with the oppressed. The big problem with all of this is that none of it would have happened - 7 October and all the rest of it would not have happened - if the international community had not given impunity to Israel for decades of apartheid, occupation and the 16-year criminal siege of Gaza , which in itself is a crime against humanity and a collective punishment, long before 7 October. Tonight, as we speak, Israeli commandos have gone into a hospital and assassinated people in their beds, including somebody who was paralysed. These people are deranged and they have been given the licence to carry out this horror against the Palestinian people for decades by the United States, Europe and every other state that treated it as a normal state instead of doing what was finally done to apartheid South Africa.

I spoke on a platform at the weekend in London at a Stop the War Coalition event with Andrew Feinstein a former MP for the ANC. He is from a Jewish background and 39 members of his family were slaughtered in Auschwitz. He stood up at the rally and said the proudest moment he ever had as a South African was seeing his government put Israel on trial for genocide.

He is of a Jewish background but said that state does not represent him and that he stands with the Palestinians in their resistance to this brutal state. I am ashamed that our Government is not standing shoulder to shoulder with South Africa in doing that. We could be proud if the Government had done so but it has failed to do so and has poured cold water on its case. Even now, the Government is procrastinating instead of doing the right thing and standing with an oppressed people who are being mowed down by a genocidal regime.

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