Richard Boyd Barrett: Moves Sanctions Against the State of Israel Bill 2025

Thanks Cathaoirleach. I move the Sanctions Against the State of Israel Bill 2025. Let me start by first of all by welcoming the many people who have come into the gallery this evening to observe this debate, people who have been marching and protesting in some cases for decades, for many years, members of the Palestinian community who are here to observe this and see how the government I suppose is going to respond to it. Let me commend the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign who are here, other groups like Sadaka who have been campaigning for many years on the issue of solidarity with Palestine against the crimes being committed against the people of Palestine by the Israeli regime. And let me also thank, although this is a People Before Profit proposed bill, I want to thank Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats and hopefully others who have already pledged support for this bill. And a special thanks to Frances Black who is also here, Senator Frances Black of course who has been campaigning to get her bill passed looking for sanctions over the occupied territories, the illegal trade with the illegally occupied Palestinian territories which the government promised in the programme for governments they would implement but still has not implemented. And we'll probably talk more about it but where there are very, very worrying signs despite the commitments that the government gave on the Occupied Territories Bill that they are, well it's not more than signs, it's a clear statement that the government are now diluting that bill. And frankly many of us have doubts that they have any intention of passing it at all despite the promise in the programme government that they would do so. But what is our bill proposing? Our bill is saying that we have an obligation under the Genocide Convention and under the Rome Statutes against Apartheid and under international law generally and our commitment to international law to human rights, that we have an obligation to impose sanctions on the State of Israel because it is in violation of those legal commitments. And it is shameful quite honestly in my opinion, I'm sorry what we are asking is that if this bill was passed and we hope the government will pass it is that we should break off all economic, trade and financial relations with the State of Israel because of the crimes we believe it is guilty of of genocide, of apartheid, of ethnic cleansing, of collective punishment of Palestinian people and the systematic ongoing for decades violation of the most basic human and civil rights of the Palestinian people. That we are obliged morally and legally to impose sanctions and we need to end the treatment of Israel as a normal state and recognise that it is a rogue pariah state. And if that wasn't clear before the events of the last three years surely it is obvious now that the Israeli regime is not a normal regime. It has revealed itself in the last three years as a depraved murder machine hell bent on a genocidal campaign of annihilation and mass murder against the Palestinian people. That's what it is. And that such a regime in our view has no place in the community of civilised nations in the international community and should be isolated economically and in every other way as happened with apartheid South Africa. When because of the resistance of people in South Africa, black South Africans and the solidarity of people across the world finally it was acknowledged that an apartheid regime like the South African regime had no right to exist and be treated as a normal state and that that regime of apartheid had to be dismantled. Surely we are beyond the point now where that is clear about the Israeli regime. What we have seen in the last three years the genocidal slaughter of more than 75,000 people in Gaza the destruction, the levelling of Gaza the destruction of all the schools, most of the housing, the infrastructure, the hospitals the mass murder of men, women and children that continues despite the claim that there is a ceasefire and that while all of that is going on we see the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the West Bank we now see the assaults again, the reoccupation of parts of Lebanon the mass murder of Lebanese people we see the attacks on Iran this is a death machine and it is obvious that is the case and that the people presiding over it are criminals Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich, Ben Giver these are sick, sick people when you have a minister of a government who gets a present for his birthday of a noose to celebrate their plan to execute Palestinians and they are celebrating that for their birthday you understand that you are dealing with sick, depraved people and that this is the mentality that is driving the Israeli state but of course all of this predates the events what we have seen in the last three years is if you like the logical conclusion of the genocidal character of the Israeli state but its crimes predate the events of October 2023 I want to just quote something that was written in 2021 I could quote many, many human rights organizations but I will just quote one because the impunity that has been granted to Israel is what has led us to the genocidal horror we have seen and this was documented by many, many organizations but just to quote one, Human Rights Watch and a report they wrote in 2021 where they said, I am quoting from it for over seven decades the international community has stood by as Israel has been given a free reign to dispossess, segregate, control, oppress and dominate Palestinians the international community has contributed to undermining the international legal order and has emboldened Israel to continue perpetrating crimes with impunity it accuses some states of actively supporting Israel's violations by supplying it with arms, equipment and other tools to perpetrate crimes under international law and providing diplomatic cover, including at the United Nations Security Council to shield it from accountability and by doing so they have completely failed the Palestinian people and have only exacerbated Palestinians' lived experience as people with lesser rights and inferior status to Jewish Israelis now that's just one human rights organization in 2021 and how prophetic are the words decades of impunity granted by the international community by the UN Security Council by countries including this country and that impunity has now led to the horror that we have seen over the last three years the failure to pass Francis' Bill, first instigated in 2018 how many times do we stand up here again and again how many times do people take to the streets long before 2023 pleading with successive Irish governments to impose sanctions pleading with them to raise the issue of the EU-Israel trade association agreement which grants favoured trade status effectively associate membership of the European Union which it still enjoys after the genocidal horror that has been imposed on the people of Gaza and still not a single solitary sanction and this week we discover I'd be interested to see what the minister is going to say here this week we discover because of a fight by the currency magazine a 12 month, according to Niall Sargent, the journalist and I don't know if people here know about this but it's absolutely shocking that in the year 2024 the Department of Trade and Enterprise and Employment approved licences to the value of 20 million euro of exports from this country to the Israeli military to the Israeli military that was a surge on the previous year, 2023 the year the genocidal assault on Gaza began of 12 million but in the years before that it was only a million although that's too much or 85,000 in another year but in the year 2023 as the genocidal assault on Gaza starts it jumps and in 2024 it goes up to 20 million and the Irish government signed off on the licences allowing export to the Israeli military while it was committing these crimes after, in the case of 2024 after South Africa had already initiated the case in the ICJ for genocide which the Irish government later joined it had to be pushed to do so but already we had had a ruling in January of 2024 by the International Court of Justice that there was a plausible case of genocide being committed by the Palestinian people and the Irish government following that grants licences to export dual use technology to the Israeli military who are carrying out the genocidal massacre it's absolutely appalling now I want to conclude my time by reminding the government what our obligations are under the Genocide Convention and I want to quote from the ICJ ruling in terms of the Bosnian genocide and this is what the ICJ said a state's obligation to prevent and the corresponding duty to act arise at the instant the state learns of or should normally have learned of the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed from that moment onwards if the state has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intents to commit genocide it is under a duty to make use of these means to make use of these means as the circumstances permit so even if there's a suspicion of genocide the signatories to the Genocide Convention are supposed to act it goes on, I won't have time to quote it here but even if the state doesn't think they will have a massive impact it should do anything in its power anything to try and deter, prevent or impact on the capacity of the state committing the genocide it should do that it should take that action and yet this state has not imposed a single sanction not one Spain has, Slovenia has other European states are still sending them arms and weapons to the vulnerable signatories to the Genocide Convention which was put together let's remind ourselves after the Holocaust on the basis that never again not just that we'll punish a genocide after the fact but that we will try and ensure it never happens again and yet we've allowed three and a half years of this genocide although as we all know decades of ethnic cleansing the entire Israeli state decades of ethnic cleansing decades of illegal occupation of Palestinian territory decades of annexation of Palestinian territory 20 years now of a siege of Gaza a collective punishment of Gaza which even before October 2023 had reduced according to the UN had reduced Gaza to the state of a permanent humanitarian crisis that was before October 2023 and then what's happened since no sanctions despite our obligations it's criminal and I'll just finish on this I said it in the earlier debate I never ever quote Eamon de Valera because I have nothing good to say about him but now I do because in 1935 Eamon de Valera instigated sanctions against Italy because Italy was engaged in a genocidal assault which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopians in 1935 and they imposed sanctions because they felt it was Ireland's duty as a former colony to impose sanctions on Italy for committing genocide against people in Africa surely the Irish government could do as well as Eamon de Valera and impose sanctions on the genocidal state of Israel