Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Two days ago, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan announced that he was pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Minister for Defence, Yoav Gallant, for a range of war crimes. One of the war crimes he was seeking the arrest warrant for was that of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. That is correct, in my opinion. It therefore is horrifying that the Israeli ambassador, the representative of a regime that is currently engaged in the war crime of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, was invited to the national Famine commemoration. It was a political decision to invite the representative of this regime because a political decision was made not to invite the Russian ambassador, for example. I would like the Taoiseach to explain to us how it is appropriate in any sense to have a representative of such a genocidal regime, which is implementing starvation on the people of Gaza as we speak, present at an event to commemorate the Famine here. It is absolutely outrageous and boggles the mind as to how it was proceeded with.

I welcome the recognition of the state of Palestine that the Government is going to engage in. It is thanks to the movement from below. It was in the programme for Government of the last Government but was not implemented. People power of this country has demanded it. It needs to be matched with actions against Israel. It is a very concrete thing. The Israeli ambassador has now been withdrawn for discussions. The Taoiseach should say she is not welcome back. We do not want the Israeli ambassador back. The Irish ambassador to Israel is being summoned to meet with Netanyahu or the foreign minister or whoever. I do not think we should be playing this game. We should say we are expelling the Israeli ambassador from Ireland. That would also have enormous public support in this country.

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