Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The American poet Maya Angelou famously coined the phrase, "You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been". The Israeli cabinet either does not know or reflect on their collective history. There is certainly a sense of some selective amnesia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father-in-law was the sole survivor of his family following the Holocaust. Both parents of the Israeli minister for agriculture Avi Dichter were Polish Jews and survivors of the Holocaust. Avi Dichter's grandfather, after whom he is named, was murdered by Nazis, in his local ghetto. Both parents of Israel Katz, the Israeli minister for defence, were Holocaust survivors from Romania. I could go on and on because the history of people of the Jewish faith is a very sorrowful, often brutal one. Nearly every Jew in this world can, unfortunately, trace family back to the Holocaust years. The murder of loved ones in concentration camps and in ghettos still hangs as a dark cloud of shame over all humanity.

Therefore how is it that any person whose ancestors had endured such destruction, barbarism, cruelty and murder could allow history to again repeat itself? How, in any moral conscience, can any of the aforementioned Israeli cabinet ministers wage a genocidal war against innocent men, women and particularly children in Gaza? Where is the moral compass of the Israeli Parliament and Government at this time?

At a meeting of the United Nations in 2009 Netanyahu, referring to an Iranian threat to his country stated, "We cannot allow evil to prepare the mass death of innocents." Yet, following the 7 October Hamas attacks, a campaign of revenge against a few people became overnight a war on humanity, an assault on innocence and a destruction of many. It is now a full-blown genocide.

I commend the efforts of this Government, acting in the international community in terms of recognising the legitimising of the Palestinian State while equally condemning Hamas and calling at international level for peace and the flow of aid for the people who so desperately need it.

The peace deal on offer this week has very much cornered the Palestinian people. I cannot see how it can work. One of the conditions of peace was that if they agreed to it aid, medicine and food would flow. How horrendous and disgusting is that that we will withhold and weaponise the very things that give life to people until they sign on the dotted line and sign away everything their country aspires to.

On the Sumud flotilla, like others in the House, I have constituents and people I know on those boats. They are to be admired. It is an act of heroism. They are putting themselves at risk. The international community needs to come together. I have some words of criticism before I finish. Far too many European countries have rightful hang-ups about their history, which they should have, but these hang-ups should not determine how they govern in the year 2025.

They should not tie their hands when they have to act and do the right thing. I will not name the countries; they all know who they are. Week on week, they are stifling the very actions and sanctions that need to happen. The same sanctions that were able to happen overnight against Vladimir Putin are simply not happening against the Israeli Government. The Irish Government has a lot done. We need to protect our citizens on the flotilla but the European community needs to speak better and with one voice.

See this speech in context