Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to talk to the Taoiseach about his planned visit to the United States next week. The World Health Organization was unable to visit hospitals in Gaza in November, December, January and part of February. Only recently has it been able to restart its work in this regard. To date, it has discovered that 15 children starved to death in those hospitals. The United Nations tells us that 500,000 people in Gaza are just one step away from starvation. Hundreds of those people gathered in Gaza city last Thursday morning before dawn. As they moved towards aid trucks that were carrying flour, they were gunned down by Israeli soldiers. Some 115 people died and more than 700 were injured. It was a massacre. The Israel Defense Forces, IDF, said that the majority were killed in a stampede and died under the wheels of the aid trucks, but UN observers who saw the dead bodies said that many of them were riddled with bullet holes. Where did the IDF get those guns and bullets? Many of them most likely came from the United States.

Between 7 October and Christmas Day, 230 cargo planes and 20 cargo ships full of weapons arrived in Israel from the US. Not satisfied with that, President Biden has included $14 billion worth of military aid for Israel in the package he is trying to get through the House of Representatives. This is nearly four times the amount of such aid the US sends Israel in an average year. While it is true that the Biden Administration is pushing for a six-week pause in the fighting, there is no question but that Biden has armed and financed a campaign that the International Court of Justice believes worthy of investigation as possible genocide. It is clear that a ground invasion of Rafah, probably the bloodiest event of the Israeli campaign, would be conducted in large measure with US weapons and financed to a significant degree by US cash.

In not much more than a week's time, the Taoiseach plans to get on a plane, travel to the US Capitol and join Joe Biden in a day of celebration. He plans to give the latter a bowl of shamrock on behalf of the Irish people. He plans to pose, no doubt, for photographs with a man who has armed and financed mass murder.

That is the truth of it. I believe that is wrong. I am confident in saying that large numbers of people on this island also think it is wrong.

More than 30 million people in the US claim Irish descent. Many of their ancestors fled the kind of famine conditions now beginning to appear in Gaza. This is an election year in the US. The Taoiseach has the opportunity to exert some real pressure here. He should tell Biden that there will be no shamrock while there is not a total ceasefire and an end to the bloody occupation. Sometimes you have to stand up and do the right thing. I would like the Taoiseach to address these issues, because this trip is now just over a week away.

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