The Government is engaged in the most cynical exercise to try to convey to the public the idea that it wants to sanction Israel for its obscene crimes against the Palestinian people while actually making sure that no serious sanction whatsoever is imposed. The Government wants to dance to the tune of corporations that profit from their involvement with Israel and from states that continue to arm and support the State of Israel while it is committing its genocidal crimes. That is why the Government does not want to do anything. Against a background where we have €4 billion worth of goods coming from the Israeli regime into this country, we end up with a Bill that may impact on €200,000 worth of vegetables and a few goods from a few settlements in the West Bank, which will have no impact whatsoever, but that is the point. The Government does not want to have any impact. That is why it has excluded services on the completely dishonest basis that they are too complicated. I can give a solution to dealing with the complexities of services that does not involve gutting the Bill but in fact could make it have a real impact. We should impose sanctions not just in the occupied territories but all across the board against the Israeli regime. That would solve the complexity. We just would not do business in goods or services or any business whatsoever with the Israeli regime because the state is underwriting, orchestrating and enforcing the occupation of the Palestinian territories. When I asked the question about the purpose of sanctions against Russia, the Government said: "It was with the aim of weakening Russia's economic base, depriving it of critical technologies and markets, and significantly curtailing its ability to wage war." In other words, the Government did not just sanction the occupied territories of Ukraine; it sanctioned the Russian regime's ability to sustain its war effort and that occupation. That is what we should be doing if we are serious about dealing with the illegal occupation of the occupied territories. We should sanction the regime that is underwriting that in total but the Government will not do that because it does not have a problem with the Israeli regime and it is just gaslighting the Irish public about its real intentions.

Sentiment score: -0.12