Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

There have been eight decades of oppression, occupation and apartheid. Today there are six million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. There are 750,000 Israeli settlers in illegal settlements. These are war crimes under international law. Israel ignored it. Apartheid has been defined by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. It is clearly apartheid and the world ignored it. Again and again, the world turned away.

It took a genocide of the scale we are seeing in Gaza for our State to officially recognise the Palestinian people. It took a genocide for us to do this. How many delays have seen to Senator Frances Black's legislation on the occupied territories and Deputy Brady's similar legislation? When we have inaction and complicity again and again internationally, Israel believes it can attack boats with human rights activists in international waters. This is why it believes it can get away with it every time. This is a moment for action. This is moment when a message is sent clearly. We have seen people queueing up for food, starving to death, who were murdered by the Israeli state. Is it any wonder that human rights activists are insisting they deliver the aid directly to the people in Gaza? Who could trust the Israeli state when it murders starving people, men, women and children queueing for food? What level of obscenity will it get to before we take actual action? This is the context for having 22 Irish citizens and 300 human rights activists from around the world in a flotilla. We need concrete action from our Government. We need an Israeli state that knows it cannot stop the flotilla.

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