Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

I am sharing time with Deputy Mac Lochlainn. First I want to extend a welcome to the families and supporters of many of those who are on the flotilla. What we are witnessing is not a war. For 24 months, Israel has inflicted a barbaric genocidal attack against the impoverished, besieged people of Gaza. Netanyahu’s brutal military machine, funded, armed and supported by the United States, the European Union and Britain, has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinian children, women and men before the eyes of the world. Israel has perpetrated mass displacement of Gazans from their homes, sent families and communities running for their lives in a hellish situation with nowhere to go, others running with the dead remains of their children and loved ones in their arms. This is a relentless bombardment. Gaza has been razed to the ground with hospitals obliterated, along with schools, water and power systems and civilian infrastructure, wiping out entire neighbourhoods. Journalists, medical professionals, aid workers have all been attacked with impunity. They have weaponised hunger, forced mass starvation on the Gazan population and have exposed them to the spread of deadly disease. This barbarity is underscored by Israel’s merciless bombardment of Gaza city and Netanyahu’s perverse, despicable threat at the UN General Assembly that Israel is preparing to “finish the job” – to finish the job of genocide.

All of this captures the cruelty of what is really a crescendo moment of Israel’s eight-decade long apartheid against Palestinians. A callous system that dehumanises and brutalises the Palestinians into, they hope, submission and subjection. Then, yard by yard, mile by mile, the Israelis seek to steal the land of the Palestinian people. That is what this is all about. We should be clear – Israel could not carry out this genocide and occupation for so long and so savagely if it were not for the impunity gifted to Netanyahu’s regime by the international community and if it was not for the moral cowardice of the world’s most powerful in shamefully failing to confront this, the atrocity of our times.

It is against this backdrop, the spineless complicity of governments, that the courageous activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail for Gaza. As the Tánaiste said, among their number is 22 Irish citizens, including our Oireachtas colleague, Sinn Féin Senator Chris Andrews. This is a peaceful mission of mercy. They sail to break an inhumane blockade of Gaza and to deliver the aid so urgently needed but it is also an act of absolute desperation and frustration with the inaction of governments and failure to act again and again no matter the horror or its extreme or extent. It seems Netanyahu and Israel can do what they want. Ireland should not pat ourselves on the back. Our people, yes; our activists, yes; our instinct, yes, but our power structures, no. They have been far too slow.

Israel’s drone strike on the flotilla was a violation of international law. That is the fact of the matter. That was an act of menace, of intimidation, of threat designed to foster fear among the activists and their families and supporters - the threat that they might pay with their very lives for daring to confront Israel and Netanyahu.

That was a week ago. What have the consequences of that breach of international law been? I want to know that. I think the families want to know that. If the Tánaiste wished to reassure all of us, including the families and the people on the flotilla, they want to know that there will be a clear challenge now to Israel and Netanyahu – not diplomatic niceties but a stark statement of facts that they can no longer with impunity break the law and take life from Palestinians and threaten the lives of Irish citizens and others. I want to know what the Tánaiste is going to do about all of this concretely. For a long time, this side of the House has called for the sanctioning of Israel. The case for that is made and beyond question but now, today and over the next 12 hours and 24 hours, what will the Oireachtas do and what will the Irish Government do to protect its citizens that are in harm’s way in the crosshairs of Netanyahu? What will be the concrete actions? I have not heard that yet and I know that is what the families want and deserve to hear.

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