European Union Dail Éireann — 2024-05-09 ============================================================ Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire Ursula von der Leyen is directly complicit in the genocidal massacre that Israel has committed in Gaza over the past seven months. She greenlit the massacre and she should be unceremoniously sacked. People should state publicly that she should not remain as the President of the EU Commission. They should say publicly, "Ursula von der Leyen; sack her." Say publicly she should be sacked for her complicity in genocide. Some of us warned the Government about this. When she came to this House in December 2022, most of this House stood and gave her a standing ovation. I was one of the few who did not and challenged her directly at that time about her cosy relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu because she visited Israel only a few months before, stood beside him, and said not a word about his Government's intention to effectively continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The writing was on the wall for her role in encouraging and greenlighting Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. Had we called her out then, we might not be looking at the horror we are facing now. --- 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/dail/2024-05-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-05-09