Can the Minister imagine being an Irish person who had been farming their land for hundreds of years when violent, entitled, deluded thieves from Brooklyn, New York, Ukraine or Russia crossed the world, having decided they wanted to come to her community to terrorise her off her land, set dogs on her sheep, raze her ancestors’ olive groves to the ground, rob her farm at gunpoint and then want to trade its fruit with us here in Ireland? Ireland knows about dispossession better than anyone. Trading with the occupied territories represents blood money. I think of the beautiful song “Strange Fruit” popularised by Nina Simone: “Blood on the leaves and blood at the root”. We do not need Israeli blood money, nor their strange fruit nor their services. Services must be included in any Bill or otherwise it is meaningless. It was a great privilege for me to stay among these lovely hospitable people in several places across the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, I could not get into Lebanon at the time. The world can plainly see what an evil, violent, warped, deranged and depraved society Israel has become. I do not want to be graphic but it is one that rapes children in mass concentration camps, trains dogs to perform unspeakable acts on detainees - this is all coming out now – bulldozes children into large pits, deliberately starves children, forcing them to run the gauntlet and then shoots them for sport in a sick kind of a “Squid Game”. They proudly post that on their social media. This is celebrated in Israeli society. It is mainstream. People who shoot babies through the head for target practice. Incinerating half-starved children with white phosphorous, which they are doing in Gaza, the occupied territories and now Lebanon. In Lebanon, Israel is now searching for Muslims being hidden and sheltered in the attics of their Christian neighbours. This is not like Europe 1944. They have taken the Nazi doctrine, they have refined it and they have made it for themselves.

Sentiment score: -0.04

Ireland does not need their blood money nor their services. We are better than that.

Sentiment score: 0.22