Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

If you did a search of the contributions I have made in this Chamber since my re-election in November of last year, you would find that Gaza, the West Bank and Palestine in general will come up top. That is a sadness for me. The relentless genocide in Gaza is continuing, as is the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, including settlers murdering innocent people in the past week. It is ongoing. It is a systematic tearing apart of the West Bank. I mentioned in previous contributions that the Israeli state - either directly, or by letting the settlers get on with it - is dividing the West Bank in such a way as to make it totally unviable as a territory. It is a deliberate policy, just like the systematic starvation and indiscriminate murder of Palestinian women, children and male civilians was also part of a policy.

This is something Ireland gets a lot of criticism for. An Israeli constituent of mine contacted me recently. They are a little bit behind the curve but they saw one of my speeches and said they would never vote for me again because I described what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocide. Well, I am sorry but the facts are the facts. To give credit to the Government, it has participated in the South Africa ICJ case along with Belgium and Spain. Some European countries have shown leadership. Ireland is to be commended on that. I hope the final judgment in legal terms will be in our favour to put additional pressure on the Israeli state. Any objective analyst has described what is happening in Gaza as genocide. We have a body of work to do to assist. I am not talking about financial contributions because that could actually do them more harm than good. There are a lot of decent, peace-minded people living in Israel who need our support. Most of all, they need access to unbiased information about what is happening because they are not getting it in their own country. It comes back to Israelis living in this country who think we are an antisemitic country. We do not have a proud history.

We had a very mealy-mouthed attitude to dealing with Jewish refugees after the Second World War. That is to our shame. As a member of the EU, we have a huge impact on other member states. I referred before to a meeting with the Danish ambassador. Because Denmark did a lot of work rescuing Danish Jews during the Second World War, they have a certain relationship with Israel which they do not want to damage. I said that friends have to tell the truth to their friends. The same thing happens with the US. My question for the Minister and Cabinet colleagues is why it is now taking so long when earlier indications were that there were a few tweaks to go into Senator Black's Bill. Senator Black herself was reasonably optimistic and was taking on board some of the arguments and points that were being made, and wanted to move on.

When I raised this after the summer recess, my impression from previous Government statements was that a lot of work would have been done over the summer and that we were ready to have the legislation passed through the Houses before Christmas. We are nowhere near that stage. Has the United States Government, in any way, shape or form, verbally or in writing, put pressure on the Irish Government not to proceed with this Bill? If any such threats have been made, they need to be put into the public domain. The reason the Irish people are so pro-Palestine is that we have empathy and compassion for a people who have been oppressed, because of our own history of oppression. Work has been done and I will give the Minister of State credit for that but we have a moral imperative to bring this legislation as far as it will go. If the Minister says it is unworkable, let us test it to see if that is the case. Otherwise, we are just hiding in plain sight. We have to do better than this. We have to bring this legislation through all the Houses of the Oireachtas and show some moral courage and leadership.

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