George Lawlor (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We can all recite the litany of the dead. We watch nightly the systematic destruction of an entire people. By design, the current Government of Israel is ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, making life impossible to endure there. There can be no doubt that the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu is well advanced in implementing a plan to remove the Palestinian people from their historic homeland through bombardment, terror and famine to ultimately replace them with Israeli settlers.

We have witnessed nothing like this in recent world history. A member of the United Nations is in defiance of the basic principles of the UN Charter, which recognises the principle of self-determination of peoples, a core concept in international law and an obligation on member states. Israel acts with impunity. It is deaf to any voice of humanity urging it to halt its unconscionable assault on the innocent. Many millions of people around the world look on in horror. I have stood in Wexford town with ordinary people of every political persuasion simply to bear witness and to stand in solidarity with the suffering people of Palestine. We stand with a sense of importance. The discussion is that there must be more we can do. We, the Irish people, have known oppression and endured famine. We know well the abuse of power by the dominant over the weak. History places an obligation on us to do all we can.

As the Minister knows well, our recent economic history has also educated our people in the power of the bond market. When Ireland was shut out of the international bond markets after the financial crash, we saw the catastrophic impact on our country. More recently, we witnessed the power of the bond markets to impact on the most powerful of political actors. When the markets rejected the budget proposals of the former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, her Government fell. Even Donald Trump was required to change course when the cost of US borrowing shot up after his liberation day declarations. While I have no illusions that any action by this State will have such dramatic impact, we must do all we can. In this case, standing against barbarism will no doubt come at a cost. Waiting for others to give leadership in order that we can more safely follow is morally unacceptable.

When the Dunnes Stores workers refused to handle fruit from apartheid South Africa in July 1984, they knew their actions would not by themselves bring down apartheid. Their actions did, however, bring about the banning of all South African goods by the Irish Government in 1987, making it the first western government to do so. We need to show the same courage and solidarity with the desperate people of Palestine today. The people of Ireland demand we take real action and do all in our power. While this may be a small, symbolic signal, it is a symbolic signal to the world that Ireland will not stand idly by in the face of genocide.

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