Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

This is my last contribution to Dáil Éireann, having served in nine Dáileanna. It is a contribution I am glad to make because it will fittingly bookend many contributions I have made. If I can, I want to thank the people of Wexford for giving me the privilege of serving here for 38 years. I thank all of the staff I have worked with, including my own personal staff over these years, in particular my parliamentary assistant who is working so hard now. I hope George Lawlor will replace me in the next Dáil. I thank all of the staff of the Houses over the years I have been here for the courtesy and kindness to me.

This particular motion is a fundamentally important one, and I commend the Social Democrats on tabling it. It is right and proper that this House should speak as strongly as we possibly can on this issue on this, the last sitting day of the Thirty-third Dáil. For more than a year, the people of Gaza have been bombed, shelled, buried under rubble, burned and starved. A staggering 43,000 Palestinians are dead. Many believe that is a considerable underestimate. Up to 10,000 more are still buried under the vast tracts of rubble that was once the built environment of Palestine, the homes, schools, hospitals and communities of an entire people.

There are no journalists allowed to witness this genocide. There is no independent media, save those brave souls who risk their lives every day to bear witness, as others in the past have borne witness to acts of gross inhumanity. As of 6 November, at least 137 journalists and media workers have lost their lives in Gaza. Since the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPG, began to collect data, to date it has been the deadliest spot for journalists to work. Most independent eyes have been denied access to see the horror unfold.

Built Gaza no longer exists. Some 80% of the buildings have been destroyed and almost all of its population displaced, not once but moved again and again, allegedly to places of safety. There are no places of safety in Gaza. Wherever they go, weary, brutalised and in mental turmoil, shells rain down upon them. There is in Gaza absolutely no safe place.

Journalists and civilians are protected by international law. That is what we understood. That was the norm. After the horrors of the Second World War, civilised countries in the United Nations said they would build a form of law to protect humanity from repeating the horrors of the Holocaust. That is what the world community, including Ireland, signed up for. The deliberate targeting of civilians is, quite simply, a war crime yet it continues, day in and day out, and the world tolerates it.

One of the most serious and shocking crimes imaginable is the crime of genocide, a word that was coined by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin. It is not a word that should be used lightly or a word that we in this House are using lightly. It is the only appropriate word to use to describe the horror which is now unfolding in Gaza. What other word is there? It makes the legal definition that we understood under the Genocide Convention that the civilised world drafted to prevent a repeat of the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.

In the face of such horror, words are simply not enough. Words of condemnation and outrage are not enough. Condemnation and criticism are not enough. However limited our power is here - the Government side can say it cannot really stop anything- we have a moral responsibility to use whatever leverage and mechanisms we have, not in a protracted legal discourse but to take direct action to say, "Stop, and stop now". The people of Ireland demand that we reflect their horror at what is ongoing now in Gaza, with practical actions of defiance and a rejection of the ongoing carnage being visited on the Palestinian people.

The initial brutality of Hamas in attacking Israel is indefensible and apparent. The response of the Israeli Government and defence forces is entirely, wholly and completely disproportionate and illegal. We must act. This House is united in seeking to pass the occupied territories Bill. There can be no acceptable reason why the Bill was not passed this week. There is no logical reason for it. Even an imperfect Bill should be put on the statute books and sent to President Michael D. Higgins to sign, simply as a determined act of solidarity from this House on behalf of the Irish people regarding what is ongoing in Gaza.

It would be an important signal. It will not end the carnage or change the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu, but it would be important. To like-minded nations, and more importantly, the beleaguered people of Palestine, it would be a ray of hope and a signal that the people of Ireland on the edge of Europe see their suffering and stand with them.

I single out the great work done by Senator Frances Black, whose determination has ensured that the occupied territories Bill has remained on the Oireachtas agenda. It is an enormous pity that it will not get over the line. The election of Donald Trump will make matters worse, if that is imaginable. Enormous moral pressure will be put on Ireland in the next Dáil and next government to appease him. I sincerely hope the Thirty-fourth Dáil will have the moral courage not only to pass the occupied territories Bill but to stand against the pressures and economic threats that no doubt will come from the new American Administration, and that we will hold firm to the values that are cherished by the Irish people.

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