Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein)

Four and a half minutes, I think; okay. The Taoiseach in his opening speech said that it is difficult to find words for the human suffering. That is true, it is difficult to find words. It is difficult to find words for the scale of it. When before in any international situation could we have ever imagined a UN official talking about 14,000 babies potentially facing starvation within 48 hours? Can we think of any precedent that even casts the tiniest shadow on a statement like that? There is no comparison. There is no comparison for the total destruction of Gaza in terms of hospitals, schools, refugee camps and bombs raining down on innocent civilians in their tens of thousands. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent days. The potential for a ceasefire is a distant shadow at this stage. Dozens of children have died in that time. It is difficult to find the words for the scale. We are talking about 14,000 babies dying, that level of starvation. This is no flood, hurricane or crop failure. It is a result of a deliberate decision to starve people and deny them essential medical equipment and food. It is based on deeply malicious intent to punish a civilian population.

If it is difficult to find words in terms of scale, it is even more difficult to find words in terms of the individual and the pain, with families completely wiped out, children left without anybody in the world, communities wiped out, with their histories, their stories and everyone belonging to them completely gone. I refer to the pain mothers and fathers must feel and the pain children must feel when they think of their parents and everyone belonging to them now gone. I extend that point to say that pain exists for every human. Like the Taoiseach, I condemn the attacks on 7 October and the pain their relatives felt. There is no justification for that either but how could that occasion this level of collective punishment on a civilian population on a scale we can hardly imagine? Out of 35 hospitals, 33 are damaged. These are the very hospitals that are trying to deal with the carnage, the bombings, the starvation and every possible kind of human suffering off the back of that. These hospitals are struggling to survive. Maybe we struggle to find words. Some words do matter; I will say that too. "War crimes" - it matters to say that. It also matters to say "genocide".

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