Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In Gaza, we see a situation so dire, it defies comprehension. An Oxfam worker with 20 years of experience working in conflict zones worldwide has said he has never seen anything like this. Children in Gaza are being starved. Israel has blocked all aid supplies from entering, leaving millions to go hungry for the past 11 weeks. It is genocide. That is what is happening and yet most of the world remains silent as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolds.

Women and children make up the majority of those killed. Nearly every piece of infrastructure has been levelled. People are being displaced all the time. Places where people are told to seek safety turn out to be death traps. The childhoods of the children of Gaza are being destroyed and they have lost entire families. More than 20,000 children have been killed, with many left with injuries that cannot be properly treated. Day in, day out Palestinians are being massacred by Israel using military grade weapons on tents, burning children to death. Apache helicopters are deliberately targeting and shooting fleeing families. The world has failed the people of Palestine. The European Union has failed the people of Palestine. What haunts the Palestinian people is not just famine; it is also the fear of outsiders arriving under the guise of aid to then start laying the foundations of colonisation and using the weaponisation of food.

Israel must be stopped now. They are the Nazis of the modern world. It is a disgusting, Zionist regime of supremacist beings who attack everyone who stands against them as anti-Semitic. Most of the world is just plain sick of this victimhood and right of entitlement to slaughter the Palestinian people at will. The people of Palestine will liberate their land because it is their land. In Ireland, we need to do more. The Taoiseach is not using all the tools at his disposal. Get off your backsides and stop the mealy-mouthed pretence of horror. At the very least, enact the occupied territories Bill.

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