Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Israel's Government is starving the people of Gaza. Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. It is a crime against humanity. It is genocide. The stated goal of the Israeli Government and military is the total displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza. Whether by military force or an artificial famine, they want to ethnically cleanse and resettle Gaza just as they have done in parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israeli Government knows it can act with impunity, backed by the US and certain European powers like Germany. It has a free reign in how it conducts its vengeful war of extermination. Israel bombs hospitals and the West turns a blind eye. It hit a UN convoy with an air strike and there was no response. It murdered an ambulance crew and buried them in rubble. It barred the entry of vital food aid to Gaza and has bombed it flat, leaving tens of thousands at imminent risk of death by starvation, and still there is no response.

The setting up of the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to administer the aid response is wrong on so many levels, including the vetting of aid recipients by cameras and using biometrics, and the guarding of aid by the IDF and armed contractors. That is the proposal. How can those who are inflicting starvation ever be trusted to deliver food aid? Now more than ever, with the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, we see the need for wholesale reform of the UN Security Council and decision-making. The Palestinian people cannot wait that long. The Irish Government must call for a new emergency special session of the UN General Assembly. International peacekeepers must be deployed to save who they can. The delivery of humanitarian aid must be assured, not used as some horrible ruse to prevent accusations of crimes against humanity.

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