Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)

This week, we read more reports of starving Palestinians in Gaza being fired upon and murdered by the IDF as they made their way to Israeli and US-run aid centres for food. It really is the lowest of the low and I cannot think of another conflict where this has happened on a daily basis, with no consequences for the perpetrators or any real possibility of consequences. Israeli officials sought to shut down the pre-existing aid system run by 15 UN agencies and 200 NGOs and partners, and introduced the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. There is nothing humanitarian about it.

It goes against common sense, best practice and the lived experience of genuine humanitarian workers and agencies to set up aid centres away from the population and then to tell civilians to come and get the aid. The same report quoted unnamed IDF soldiers who said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites to drive them away or disperse them. The Israeli Government disputes this, but we are in the 21st century and there is ample video evidence and witness testimony to show it is lying about deliberately murdering innocent, starving and desperate civilians on a daily basis.

Israel has weaponised aid. Those words should never go together. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid system has been condemned by the UN agencies. UN Secretary General António Guterres branded it inherently unsafe. Even if I welcome that statement, it is a gross understatement. Israel has conducted thousands of attacks on five countries, namely, the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, in the last two years. It is militarily occupying the sovereign and internationally recognised territory of Syria and Palestine and makes regular incursions into Lebanon, which have also endangered Irish peacekeepers there.

The latest aggression was against Iran. In 2013, a news report in the Times of Israelquoted a study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security that stated Iran could have a nuclear bomb in a month. We are hearing the same rhetoric 12 years later from the world's warmongers as justification for Israel and its chief weapons and finance supplier, the US, attacking its neighbours. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, nor is it close to developing one. If it had one, the US and Israel would not have attacked it as it would have meant mutual destruction. That is a polite way of saying the end of the world. Israel does not confirm it has nuclear weapons, but anyone with a knowledge of history will remember reading about the Apollo affair, where the CIA believed that Israel's first bombs may have been made with the highly enriched uranium stolen in the mid-1960s from the US Navy nuclear fuel plant in Pittsburgh. Great friends they are. Israel has not signed the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which is an international treaty. We know Israel does not abide by international treaties or laws unless they are of some benefit to it.

The International Criminal Court has issued warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defense of Israel. The International Court of Justice has stated Israel should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and end its illegal occupation of those areas as soon as possible. Scores of UN resolutions have condemned the Israel Government's and the IDF's actions, yet none of these are being acted upon. Do we really want a world where international law is meaningless? We can take a stand in Ireland. We can pass the occupied territories Bill and include goods and services. We can use our voice in the EU to end the EU-Israel association agreement. We raise our voices against an apartheid state engaging in genocide and ethnic cleansing. Our history will judge us all if we continue to remain silent.

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