Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)

What is happening in Gaza is the ultimate appalling vista with 65,000 people murdered, including 25,000 children. Every day, on our television screens we are witnessing the deliberate destruction of the Palestinian people by bomb, bullet and starvation. Gaza is now one big concentration camp and 2.3 million Palestinians are facing obliteration and starvation.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that the Palestinian people in Gaza had a plausible right to be protected from the imminent risk of genocide. That ruling triggered obligations under the Genocide Convention to take all possible actions to prevent genocide. Shortly after that, in June 2024, the United Nations international commission of inquiry found that Israel's action in Gaza constituted the war crime of willful killing and mistreatment and a crime against human against humanity of extermination. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Israel is stopping humanitarian aid to Gaza while Gazans starve. That is a war crime. The United Nations last week classified Israel's action in Gaza as genocide. There are strong sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine and, last week, sanctions were imposed on Iran. I have no problem with that but what does it take to impose sanctions on Israel, a state that is committing genocide in Gaza?

Famine and starvation are part of our heritage in Ireland. One million Irish people died in An Gorta Mór in the 1840s and 1850s. The devastation of the famine was a genocide of the Irish people by a foreign imperial government. British imperial power allowed our people to starve while exporting shipload after shipload of foodstuffs. In a similar situation, Israel is starving the Palestinian people by stopping thousands of truckloads of food and humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza. This country, because of its colonial past and the Great Famine, has a unique bond with the Palestinian people.

Strong words and condemnation are not good enough anymore. We must immediately impose sanctions, pass the occupied territories Bill on goods and services and stop the passage of military planes through Shannon.

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