An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2023-10-10 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel I join with the Cathaoirleach in marking Taiwan's national day. I wish them the very best. Further to what has been said by my colleagues about what is happening in the Middle East, Hamas has been armed by God knows who. Clearly it is saying the Iranians were not a part of this attack and we must acknowledge that. Both Hamas and the Iranians have said it and we must acknowledge that. However, we are very quick to jump on other countries when something like what happened this horrible weekend happens, which is only the start. It has only started and my fear is that by the time Israel extends its defence and the right to defend its people, there will be nothing left of Gaza. It will be razed to the ground. We must start asking who is behind who in this because there are forces from the West and forces from the East and they are supporting both sides. Who pays the price? It is women, children and old people with Parkinson's disease being dragged off as hostages. We must be real at some stage. I have been listening to talk about the need for peace talks in the Middle East since Adam was a boy and we have got nowhere. There is a little step forward and then four steps back and the thing gets worse and worse. Everybody who has a piece of this on his or her plate needs to come out and be honest. Israel has been supported by the West and I would not like to live in Israel where at any stage and time, rockets could come my way. However, not unlike Northern Ireland during the Troubles, people in communities tolerated these terrorists who were prepared to wage war on the other side, knowing that some of them would die as a result, that innocent people would die as a result of it. We saw how the IRA and Red Hand Commandos did deals to kill off each other. If I did not like you, I could get one of the Ulster Volunteer Force, UVF, guys to shoot you and in return, they would get a republican to shoot one of their guys. War is filthy. We have to question ourselves and we must be honest. Support Israel - yes - but is it justifiable to take out an entire apartment block because one apartment is inhabited by some guy from Hamas? We will never encourage the local population to turn against Hamas if we start destroying everything in the place. It is utterly inhuman to cut off fuel, water and food. I do not care how bad things are. Cutting off the basics for life is totally unacceptable. I support Israel's need to defend itself but I also support innocent women, children and old people who are suffering today in Gaza. We have to switch back on the power to live. We have to give them that. The Israeli army is big enough to go in and find everybody from Hamas and take them out if it wanted to. Do not kill innocent people. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-10-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:15+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-10-10