Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I wish Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett the very best in the coming weeks as he undergoes his treatment. He has been a vociferous campaigner both inside and outside this Dáil for many decades. I very much look forward to him resuming that work.

Last night, senior UN humanitarian officials released a joint statement pleading with the international community to act on Gaza. For over a month, no commercial or humanitarian supplies have entered; no food, no water and no medicine. Al-Aqsa hospital, according to one report, is a place of concentrated horror and suffering. A constant stream of ambulances rush in loaded with casualties, mostly crushed and charred bodies and dismembered children. Those children endure amputation procedures without any anaesthetics. The number of dead, injured and missing people in Gaza is now approaching 200,000. The Israeli Government is acting with impunity to maim, murder, incarcerate and torture Palestinian people. The Israeli Army is committing war crimes in the full glare of the media spotlight. On 23 March, 15 paramedics in Gaza and their ambulances disappeared. A week later, their bodies were discovered in a mass grave along with their crushed emergency vehicles. The Israeli Army claimed it opened fire on the emergency workers as their vehicles were moving suspiciously without headlights or flashing lights. Mobile phone footage recovered from one of the victims' bodies has proven that was a lie. They were slaughtered without warning on the side of the road. The lies about this massacre from the Israeli Army are blatant and grotesque and the silence from western leaders has been deafening and shameful.

As a signatory to the genocide convention, this country has a legal obligation to do whatever it can to stop genocide. Instead of searching planes at Shannon for weapons, the State is strip-searching peaceful protestors.

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