Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements
Dail Éireann — 2024-10-22
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

At what point does the Taoiseach think Israel's crimes against the Palestinians reach the threshold of horror and unacceptability that mean it deserves the same sort of sanctions as apartheid South Africa? I ask that because the crimes it has committed are way in excess of even that horrific regime. Long before the genocide of last year, many South African representatives, going right back to Mandela and Desmond Tutu, said that this is an obnoxious apartheid regime that is horrific in its treatment of Palestinians. We now have a genocide. When the Taoiseach discusses this with Keir Starmer, whose views in continuing to justify Israel's crimes are shocking beyond belief, I genuinely ask at what point he will say that Israel has reached the threshold that apartheid South Africa reached when it had to be cast out of the international community and totally isolated because its regime was based on systematic crime against the majority of the population. Has Israel not reached that threshold? How can Ireland facilitate the sale of Israeli war bonds, which are being touted as financing its campaign in Gaza, which in the view of many, if not most, people is genocidal, to finance the mass murder of Palestinians? Will the Government do something about it?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-10-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:23+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-10-22