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

I have been campaigning for Palestinian rights since I was there in 1987 - I lived there - and my position has been very consistent over a very long time, as has been the movement in this country of solidarity with Palestine. My position is that, in relation to the apartheid state of Israel, we need to do what was done to the apartheid state of South Africa. A state based on apartheid and ethnic cleansing has no place in the civilised world. Surely we now have the evidence that is the case, even if the Minister and the Government did not accept it before. A state capable of genocide is not a normal state. A state built on apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the siege of Gaza is not a normal state. Stop treating it like a normal state. Treat it like the apartheid state of South Africa.

Of course, Governments were eventually forced to recognise that because of the actions of those like the Dunnes Stores workers, who said they were not going to handle goods from a state that was capable of this horror. We should do the same. That is what Mothers Against Genocide are doing, and I handed a letter to the Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, yesterday. Hundreds of doctors are appealing for sanctions now. Stop this horror. Stop treating the state doing this to the Palestinians as if it is some sort of normal state.

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