Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. First, I thank Senators Black and Higgins, not just for this particular motion and for the opportunity to debate yesterday. We have had multiple debates over the past number of years and if I was to be asked by anybody on the road tomorrow what the most important issue to Senator Black is, this is the one I associate most with her and that she has raised so often in this House. Her commitment to people, human dignity and social justice, as well as Senator Higgins, is absolutely unquestionable and I thank them for it.

I have received hundreds of emails over the past couple of days and I am embarrassed to say I have not been able to respond to all of them. I am pleased to be able to stand here tonight and support the Palestinian people. I have no notion as to what the Israeli people felt like after 7 October. They probably were enraged and suffering from shock, grief, horror, anger and everything. What we have seen over the past number of months is a people that have been absolutely blinded by rage. I can totally understand that a terrorist organisation that was responsible for a shocking event on 7 October needs to be responded to. However the tens of thousands of people, including 17,500 children, that we see on the hour every single day shaking on hospital trolleys, if there even are hospital trolleys because there are no hospitals left, is absolutely so shocking that it is nearly not believable. Except we know it absolutely is the truth.

I am reminded of the old saying, "The first casualty of war is the truth." No one can lie given the pictures we see. We can hear Israeli people and stories on the Internet that may or may not be true but they cannot lie with the pictures we see before our eyes. I saw an aerial picture of Gaza yesterday and there does not seem to be anything left except rubble. When I heard colleagues speaking earlier about mothers moving from one part of Rafah to another and then another, I do not know where they are moving to because when I look at the pictures, there is not anything left to move away from or to. Then we see on Israeli Twitter accounts pictures of beautiful beachside resorts where apparently this is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago. Their subterfuge or disinformation is to ask why the Palestinian people would have let all of this go to ruin. The only people who are responsible for the destruction of that picture, if it was ever true in the first place and I do not know whether it was, are the people who are waging war on innocent people. I have no doubt that in tunnels somewhere or maybe among even the 12 people in UNRWA, there were people who were intent on retaliating or attacking Israelis but it is totally and wholly completely disproportionate to the response we have seen from Israel over the past number of months.

The failure of the international community to hold the Israelis to account is very difficult to understand. When it boils down to it, I can only probably excuse politics in a certain way. When we consider large countries, there is probably a history to the response of some European countries and how they continue to support Israel. There is probably guilt and history within their DNA. Many countries that have absolutely nothing to do with memory or corporate DNA history are still standing idly by and not making charges against Israel. Senator Garvey referred to mad people, and one particular man, I do not even particularly blame him because there is an entire government and a whole agency of operations, both the real government and the permanent government in Israel, that is doing nothing but support their actions. It is really hard to understand.

That is why I am so proud of the response, not just of the Irish people, because that has been immense and probably long-standing. There has always been a really good connection between the Irish people and the Palestinian people because of our shared history. The response from our Government and our officials over the past couple of months was probably a very lonely position that was started by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was a very isolated position and people were very wary of what they were saying, and they were outliers. I am very proud of the position our Government and our people have taken. Some of the language that is being used, albeit it is an attempt to be diplomatic in what is an undiplomatic situation, started off a little bit softly. Words such as revenge are really strong and powerful. Those diplomatic efforts have managed to bring other countries along - obviously not as many as we would like but that momentum will change in the coming weeks and months. Ultimately, the person who needs to stand up, the strongest in the entire world, is the President of the United States. He needs to be really strong in his language. I heard last week that he said something on a phone call to the president of Israel. It is not good enough to say it on a phone call. It is really important we hear it loud and clear.

You also have to put your money where your mouth is. There is no point in telling them to stop doing something on the one hand and to keep giving them the arms to do it on the other. We either care about the destruction of an entire race of people and do something about it or everything else is just lip service. I thank the Senators for what they did today. I am really pleased this motion will pass unopposed this evening because we all share the shock, the horror and the revulsion at what is going on and we stand behind the people of Palestine.