Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Tánaiste, and the substance, tone and inclusivity of his remarks, his identification with the occupied territories Bill and his indication of co-operation with those of us who support it. Senator Frances Black introduced the Bill, which was passed by a majority of the House in 2017. That happened in circumstances where the Israeli Government accused those of us, including myself, Senator Ivana Bacik, as she then was, former Senator David Norris and Senator Frances Black of being antisemites. I will come back to that in a moment.

This morning, a gentleman called Bezalel Smotrich, who is the Finance Minister in the current Israeli Government, announced that the Israeli Government intends to create a further 22 settlements in the West Bank. That is creeping annexation by any standards, but it should not surprise us because this man has, over the past ten years, clearly indicated what the agenda of his party and the extreme right in Israel is.The coalitions that have been formed by Benjamin Netanyahu have been voluntary coalitions in which Netanyahu has escaped prosecution for corruption by remaining the Prime Minister of Israel. People talk about Israel being a democracy. What kind of democracy has a man like Smotrich in it? I will let the Senators in on a few things he has said. In 2015, he gave an interview where he said, "The Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is an asset." He stated that, while the Palestinian Authority was harming Israel in international forums, Hamas's status as a terrorist organisation meant that no one would recognise it, no one would give it status at the International Criminal Court and no one would put forth a resolution at the UN Security Council. It was a cardinal principle of the right wing in Israel that it should support Hamas to weaken the arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, which was trying to edge Palestinian opinion towards a two-state solution and trying to secure international support for that.

When one looks at Hamas and condemns it - as I absolutely do, and I condemn the atrocity it unleased on 7 October 2023 - we must remember that it was nurtured by people like Smotrich who wanted it there to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution. He bears the moral blame, and so does Netanyahu, for putting 2.2 million people under the control of a terrorist organisation which was by no means democratic and putting them into a pressure cooker where that group was enabled to unleash the atrocity of 7 October. It must be put on record that the Israeli Government which is there now backed Hamas because it suited it to do so. It did not expect what happened on 7 October 2023. To this day, I wonder what madness infused the minds of the people who organised the atrocities that were committed that day, but it was the Israeli Government which arranged that the Qatari Government would finance Hamas. It was the Israeli Government which was happy that Hamas should be there and the PLO administration, the Palestinian Authority, should be reduced to impotence. If it is a democracy, it has elected and re-elected governments to pursue that policy.

There is such a thing as collective responsibility. I recognise that there are many good Jewish and Israeli people who completely abhor what is going on in Gaza. I recognise that. If it is to be regarded and held up as a democratic state, let us remember what it is doing and what its elected Government is doing, which is shocking. By any standard, it is completely shocking. It is saying, in effect, that the atrocity that is now going in the West Bank and in Gaza is justified by virtue of the activities of Hamas, which, when it suited the Israeli Government, it propagated and described as an asset.

Smotrich has said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." Where did these people come from? They came from the circumstances in which Israel was founded. They were isolated in three areas: Gaza, the occupied West Bank and in southern Lebanon in refugee camps. That is where they came from. They did not flood in from Saudi Arabia or Jordan or anywhere else. They were people who lived in Palestine until the violence of that period. I am not going to look back now and say who was right and who was wrong in 1948, but to say that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people is deeply offensive. In November 2023, immediately after the incursion and the atrocity in October, Smotrich said, "There are 2 million Nazis in [the West Bank] who hate Jews exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza." Just think about that. That is what the Israeli finance minister, the man who is expanding their settlements today by 22, illegally and contrary to international law, is saying. In May of this year he said, "Gaza will be totally destroyed," and, concerning the Palestinians, "They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places." Those words are just fresh out of his mouth. That is what we are dealing with. That is genocide. It is contrary to every principle of international law.

Ireland has consistently backed Resolution 242 of the United Nations to the effect that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself within its internationally recognised boundaries. We have never queried that and those of us who supported Senator Black's Bill have never argued that was not the case. None of us have ever argued that was not the case. We are now in the position that, unfortunately, the stars are aligned such that we have President Trump in Washington DC and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his envoy to the Arab nations, was the first person to articulate the idea that everybody could be cleared out and the land given to Israel to establish it as a piece of real estate. He has armed Israel. He has sent weapons to Israel. If he had any moral authority or difference in ultimate aim from his son-in-law's plan or from Smotrich or Netanyahu, he could have made it very clear that all of this had to stop, but he is a paper tiger when it comes to this. He is operating on a very different wavelength.

What has happened in Gaza is indefensible. What happened on 7 October 2023 was completely barbarous, but we must live with the truth that one atrocity should not beget another. The two million people in Gaza who are being bombed and whose homes are being destroyed are innocent people. They are the victims of circumstance. They are the people whose affairs were run by Hamas with the active encouragement of the Israeli Government because Hamas was an asset and the Palestinian Authority was a burden. When people talk about the rights and wrongs of what is going on, one cannot kill more than 50,000 people, one cannot kill women and children in pursuit of a dwindling number of hostages whose chances of survival are dwindling with the extent of the savagery of what is going on, one cannot justify any of this, and this will not be forgiven. Senator Kelleher mentioned the definition of antisemitism, a definition with which I totally agree, but those who are defending, justifying or equivocating what is happening in Gaza are the agents of international antisemitism; none of us are.