I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I start by welcoming the many people who have come into the Gallery this evening to observe this debate. They are people who have been marching and protesting in some cases for decades or many years. Members of the Palestinian community are here to observe this and see how the Government is going to respond to it. I commend the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other groups like Sadaka, which are here and 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. Although this Bill was proposed by People Before Profit, I thank Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and, hopefully, others, who have already pledged support for this Bill. I give special thanks to Senator Frances Black who is also here and of course has been campaigning to get her Bill passed, looking for sanctions on trade with the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. The Government promised in the programme for Government it would be implemented but it still has not implemented it. We will probably talk about it more. However, despite the commitments given by the Government, there is a clear statement that it is now diluting that Bill. Many of us frankly have doubts that it has any intention of passing it at all despite the promise in the programme for Government that it would do so. Our Bill is saying that under the Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute against apartheid, international law generally and our commitment to international law and human rights we have an obligation to impose sanctions on the State of Israel because it is in violation of those legal commitments. We are asking, if this Bill is passed, which we hope the Government will agreed to, is that we should all break off all economic, trade and financial relations with the State of Israel because of the crimes we believe it is guilty of. They are genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment of Palestinian people and the systematic, ongoing, decades long violation of the most basic human and civil rights of the Palestinian people. We are morally and legally obliged 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. If that were not clear before the events of the past three years, it is surely obvious now. The Israeli regime is not a normal regime. It has revealed itself in the past three years as a depraved murder machine hell-bent on a genocidal campaign of annihilation and mass murder against the Palestinian people. That is what it is. Such a regime in our view has no place in the community of civilised nations and in the international community and should be isolated economically and in every other way as happened with apartheid South Africa. Because of the resistance of black South Africans and the solidarity of people across the world, it was finally acknowledged that an apartheid regime like South Africa had no right to exist and be treated as a normal state, and that regime had to be dismantled. Surely, we are beyond the point now where that is clear about the Israeli regime. We have seen in the past three years the genocidal slaughter of more than 75,000 people in Gaza, the levelling of Gaza, the destruction of all the schools, most of the housing, the infrastructure, the hospitals and the mass murder of men, women and children. That continues despite the claim that there is a ceasefire. While all of that is going on, we see the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. We see again the assaults and reoccupation of parts of Lebanon and the mass murder of Lebanese people. We see the attacks on Iran. This is a death machine. It is obvious that is the case, and that the people presiding over it are criminals. Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir are sick, sick people. When the minister of a government gets a present of a noose for his birthday to celebrate their plan to execute Palestinians, and they celebrate that for their birthday, you understand you are dealing with sick, depraved people. This is the mentality that is driving the Israeli State. Of course, all of this predates the current events. What we have seen in the past three years is the logical conclusion of the genocidal character of the Israeli State but its crimes predate the events of October 2023. I want to quote something written in 2021. I could quote many human rights organisations but I will just quote one because the impunity granted to Israel is what has led us to the genocidal horror we have seen. This was documented by many organisations, but I will cite one, namely Human Rights Watch, and a report it produced in 2021. The report in question states that for over seven decades, the international community has stood by as Israel has been given free rein to dispossess, segregate, control, oppress and dominate Palestinians. It also states that the international community has contributed to undermining the international legal order and has emboldened Israel to continue to perpetrating crimes with impunity. Human Rights Watch 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. It states that by doing so, these states have completely failed the Palestinian people and only exacerbated Palestinians' lived experience as people with lesser rights and inferior status to Jewish Israelis. That was just one human rights organisation in 2021. How prophetic are its words. Decades of impunity have been granted by the international community, by the UN Security Council and by this country. That impunity has now led to the horror we have seen over the past three years. There was the failure to pass Senator Black’s Bill, which was instigated in 2018. How many times did we stand up in this House and how many times did people take to the streets - long before 2023 - to plead with successive Governments to impose sanctions? How many times did we plead with those in government to raise the EU-Israel association agreement? This grants favoured trade status and is effectively associate membership of the European Union. Israel still enjoys this after the genocide and horror that has been imposed on the people of Gaza and there has been not a single, solitary sanction. I will be interested to hear what the Minister is going to say about the next matter I am about to raise. I do not know if people are aware of it, but it is absolutely shocking. This week, because of a fight by The Currency, which, according to the journalist Niall Sargent took 12 months, we discovered that in 2024 the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment approved licences to the value of €20 million for exports from this country to the Israeli military. That was a surge in the value of such exports in the previous year, €12 million, when the genocidal assault on Gaza began. In the years before that, it was only €1 million, although that is too much, or €85,000 in another year. In 2023, however, when the genocidal assault on Gaza began, the figure jumped. In 2024, it went up to €20 million. This is the Government signing off on licences to allow exports of goods to the Israeli military while it was committing these crimes. In the case of 2024, this was after South Africa had already initiated the case before the ICJ in respect of the genocide, which the Government later joined, although it had to be pushed to do so. We already had a ruling from the ICJ in January 2024 to the effect there was a plausible case of genocide being committed against the Palestinian people. Following that, the Government granted licences to export dual-use technology to the Israeli military that is carrying out the genocidal massacre. That is absolutely appalling. I will conclude by reminding the Government what our obligations are under the Genocide Convention. I want to quote the ICJ ruling on the Bosnian genocide. It states: ...a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that 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 intent ... [to commit genocide] it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit. Thus, even if there is a suspicion of genocide the signatories to the Genocide Convention are supposed to act. I will not have time to quote it but the judgment goes on to state that even if a state does not think it will have a massive impact, it should do anything in its power to try to deter, prevent or impact on the capacity of the state committing the genocide. It also states that such action should be taken. Despite that, this State has not imposed a single sanction. Not one. Spain and Slovenia have. Other European states are still sending the Israelis arms and weapons and it is just deplorable. These are signatories to the Genocide Convention, which was put together, let us remind ourselves, after the Holocaust on the basis that "Never again" meant not just that we would punish a genocide after the fact but that we would try to ensure it never happens again. Despite this, we have allowed three and a half years of this genocide, although, as we all know, there have been decades of ethnic cleansing. The entire Israeli state has been based from the beginning on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. There have been decades of ethnic cleansing and decades of illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory. For 20 years now, there has been a siege of Gaza, which is a collective punishment of its people and which, according to the UN had, even before October 2023, reduced it to a state of permanent humanitarian crisis. And then there is what has happened since. There have been no sanctions despite our obligations. It is criminal. I will finish with something I said earlier. I never, ever quote Éamon de Valera because I have nothing good to say about him. Now, however, I will because in 1935, Éamon de Valera instigated sanctions against Italy because it was engaged in a genocidal assault that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopians. His Government imposed sanctions because it felt it was Ireland's duty as a former colony to impose sanctions on Italy for committing genocide against people in Africa. Surely this Government can do as well as Eamon de Valera and impose sanctions on the genocidal State of Israel.

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Iran.

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I thank the people in the Gallery for sitting through all of that, particularly the comments of those in government. One thing I think they should know is that the senior Minister does not normally come in to take these Thursday debates. The reason she did is because the people in the Gallery are here and because there will, I hope, be tens of thousands of people on the streets again on Saturday, as there have been month in, month out for the past three years as a result of the slaughter being visited on the Palestinian people. After what they have heard today, I hope people will also mobilise next Wednesday outside the gates of the Dáil when the vote on this Bill is due to take place. We should not give up on exerting the kind of pressure that brought the Minister in here. Normally, as stated, senior Ministers do not come in for these Thursday debates. The Minister came in because of the pressure that people are exerting on the Government. This Government is under pressure. I want to again thank Senator Frances Black, who also sat through all of this debate, and she has sat through a lot over the past ten years or so listening to promises about how the Government was going to progress her Bill, and it never happens. I do not know. Deputy Paul Murphy and I were debating whether the Government is ever going to pass it or whether it will just pass it and then dilute it to such a point that it will have no impact. That is the space we are in. The Government's tactic does seem to be to speak out of both sides of its mouth. There was a bit of the Minister's speech that was designed to make it look as if the Government is concerned and cares, but the bottom line, as has already been said, is that the Government will "not be supporting the Bill in its current form". It is not too late; if the Government is saying that the Bill needs a few amendments, the Minister of State should not call the vote now. The senior Minister has left because, at the end of this, the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach will ask if this Bill to impose economic sanctions and break off economic, trade and finance relations with the State of Israel because of its involvement in genocide, apartheid and multiple breaches of international law and human rights is agreed. Second Stage will be agreed unless the Minister of State says "Not agreed". That is what is going to happen. Despite all the 15 or 20 pages of the Minister's speech, and all the crocodile tears, the Minister of State is, I assume, going to say "Not agreed". If the Government does not say that, we moved forward towards the imposition of sanctions. We have set out that we believe it is clear, from the ICJ rulings in previous cases and from the case law around genocide, that all signatories of the Genocide Convention have an obligation to act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, the worst crime a state or anybody can commit. It has been committed, and the Irish Government has said - it took a while, but eventually - that it believes it has been committed and yet, it is refusing its obligations to do what is in its power to impose those sanctions. Let us be absolutely clear. Israel will not stop killing Palestinians. It will not stop its genocidal campaign against them, its illegal occupation of their land and the brutal siege of Gaza. Millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and all across the Middle East, whose forebears were driven out in the act of ethnic cleansing in 1948 known as the Nakba, the 78th anniversary of which is this year. The State of Israel will not stop committing the crimes it has been committing since 1948 unless it is stopped. That is clear. Surely, it is clear. It will not stop unless it is stopped. If we continue to treat it as a normal state, why would it stop? All the evidence suggests the opposite. All the evidence is that if you allow it to act with impunity, it becomes emboldened. It goes further, and what it does gets worse. The genocidal horror does not improve, and being nice to Israel does not make it a little better. It gets worse and is emboldened by the impunity it enjoys. We are now at a point where there is no crime, horror, obscenity or atrocity that the Israeli regime is not willing to commit blatantly and flagrantly and to crow about the commission of these crimes. Some of the stuff is just beyond belief. I refer to some of the statements these people have made. To give the Minister of State some examples, in February 2025, the deputy speaker of the Knesset said that all adults in Gaza should be killed. He described all Palestinians as scum. Imagine if the Leas-Cheann Comhairle said that about any group. What would we think? That is what the Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the Knesset said about Palestinians. This is not a normal regime. The Government draws a distinction between the occupied territories and says, "Oh, we accept that is wrong". To trade with an occupied territory most certainly is wrong. It is prohibited under international law. Who directs the brutal, illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, however? The State of Israel directs it. Who directed the illegal siege of Gaza that has gone on for 17 years, which leads them to even kidnap people bringing humanitarian aid from this country and around the world on the high seas and in international waters? Who directs that? The Israeli state directs it. Who directs the bombardment of Lebanon and the reoccupation of southern Lebanon? The Israeli state does it and successive Israeli governments - not just this one - have done it. They have been doing it since 1948. Every single Israeli Government has done it. I am not saying there is not a minority of people in Israel who are opposed but the opinion polls are clear. The vast majority of people in the Israeli state support what the Israeli regime is doing, and it always has. I lived there. The reason the Minister of State has to put up with me in this House is because I went there. I was not political; I went there when I was 18 years of age and I stumbled into the first Palestinian intifada. I was horrified. When I was there, there was no armed resistance by Palestinians. They were young people protesting against the apartheid regime and against the fact that they had been living in refugee camps all of their lives. Their families had been driven out in 1948, and they were protesting on the streets. The worst act of violence they committed was to throw stones at the Israeli military, the fourth most powerful military in the world, and they were brutally shot down and beaten down. As for armed resistance, the development of Hamas even as an armed wing did not happen until years after that. It was the brutality of the regime. It was not willing to give an inch on the brutal system of apartheid. The Israeli regime had made it clear; it wanted to further expand the borders of Israel. It wants to drive the Palestinians out. The intent of the regime is genocidal. Are we going to do anything about that? If we do not, it is not going to stop. What the Government is saying is that we cannot do it unless the European Union says it is okay. We know Germany, as we speak, is a major provider of arms to the regime committing this genocidal horror. I have not mentioned Daniel Tatlow-Devally, an Irish citizen who has been imprisoned since, I think, last September and treated as if he is a terrorist because he took direct action against Elbit Systems, the main provider of weapons from Germany to Israel to allow it to commit the crimes we have seen in Gaza and elsewhere. He is being treated like a terrorist, and his family are begging the Irish Government to send observers to the trial, which is a show trial, a travesty and a disgrace. The doublespeak is clear. The Government will not send an observer. It will not call for a boycott of the football match, and we discovered this week that €20 million worth of technology licences have been approved by the Irish Government and are going to the Israeli military, which is carrying out all these atrocities. Then there is Shannon Airport and the US military, which is up to its neck in complicity with Israel, providing it with all the weapons - weapons allowed to go through Irish airspace by the Irish Government. We are up to our necks in complicity. That is why we are doing nothing. I ask the Government to pull back. We have an obligation, as a former colony, to stand with people suffering this sort of genocidal horror and colonial oppression. I ask the Minister of State to end the complicity and not to stand up and say "Not agreed". Do the right thing.

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