Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Clonan's comments on the Green Paper on disability. We saw it at a meeting of the social protection committee and I am really disturbed by it. Unfortunately, I am travelling to Paris on Thursday so I cannot join the Senator for the protest, but I urge the Leader to listen very carefully to what he is saying. The paper is straight out of the fascist playbook of the 1980s. It is horrific and really needs to be put to an end.

I want to raise the issue of Palestine once again, starting with a quote from Mahmoud Mushtaha, a journalist in Gaza. I heard him on The Echo Chamber Podcast, a podcast I cannot recommend highly enough. He referred to all the nights the people have not slept because of intensive bombing everywhere and smoke everywhere. He said he went into the street with some of his family and does not know where they are now, adding that people are crying and screaming and do not know where to go. He asked where the rule of the United Nations is and whether it is okay to leave people dying in Gaza without a reason, without anything.

It is very clear now that the pause was just that, a pause in the genocide, a pause to allow women and children who were held hostage to be rightly returned to their families so Israel could then continue to bomb and murder women and children in Gaza. That is what it is doing. The latest figures show 15,800 deaths, 70% of which are of women and children. It is nothing less than genocide.

I have to ask again where the consequences for Israel are. How can any of us talk about human rights, China and the illegal war that Russia is still pursuing, wrongly, in Ukraine if we are not prepared to call for consequences for what we are witnessing day in and day out, which is genocide? The stories become more horrific. Israel is murdering journalists, doctors and ambulance drivers and there is indiscriminate carpet bombing, yet we have nothing to say about the consequences. We have to have something to say about consequences. We know what we can do; we can follow Belgium's lead and pass the occupied territories Bill – a Bill that has been copied in Belgium and passed to take a stand for human rights. We could recognise the state of Palestine, support Deputy John Brady's divestment Bill, take action, stand up and take a lead for ourselves, our dignity and the dignity and lives of the Palestinians. Simply saying what is happening is awful is not good enough. We are in a position to and must take action. I cannot see how it is going to be okay for us all to head off for Christmas next week knowing that, according to a British defence spokesperson I heard on the radio this morning, this genocide is going to continue throughout December and January, at the very least. How can that possibly be okay? The Government has to step up and now say what the consequences will be for Israel, for the sake of us all.