EU-Israel Association Agreement: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I welcome the Minister of State here today. I also welcome the motion tabled by Senator O'Loughlin. I agree with everything stated therein.
In the immediate aftermath of 7 October 2023, I spoke in this House about what was likely to happen as a result. I pointed out, more or less with uncanny accuracy, what the result would be if Benjamin Netanyahu unleashed military force on Gaza. Some 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza since. Nothing in the horrific attack perpetrated by Hamas on innocent people on 7 October 2023 justifies the ferocity of what has been done. The demolition of civilian infrastructure, the reduction of Gaza to a heap of rubble, the bombing of hospitals and ambulances, the random execution by snipers of people in food queues and the torture of persons detained, including sexual torture in Israel by the Israel Defense Forces – all of these things are undeniable.
We talk about international law but, as somebody who has always believed in the right of Israel to exist within its internationally recognised borders, the situation has now been arrived at whereby Israel and the Israeli Government have whipped up such hostility and revulsion across the world at what they are doing that they have done more damage to the idea of a Jewish state and to the reputation of that state than any of their rabid critics could ever have imagined. Decent people right across the world see what is happening. It is about time that we, together at a European Union level, did something rather than simply condemn or make speeches about what has happened and what is happening.
If we look at what is happening in south-west Syria, southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in all of those places Zionist Israel is expanding and grabbing land in breach of every principle of the United Nations charter, in every possible way – unfortunately with disgraceful American support from the Trump Administration. Some $21 billion has been given to them in military subsidies since 7 October, which has largely been spent in attacking innocent people.
It is all very well to get outraged about a crucifix being defiled or a statue of Our Lady being mocked or whatever else. In those circumstances the Israeli Government immediately promises criminal action against the soldiers involved, but 70,000 people and probably 30,000 children lie dead in Gaza as a result of that Government's activities. Let us remember too that Hamas was held out by the right-wing Israeli people, ministers such as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in the Israeli coalition Government, effectively as an agent or a guarantor that there would never be a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is not as if Hamas was something whose creation the right wing in Israel opposed; quite the reverse, they welcomed it because it damaged moderate Palestinian control over the Palestinian areas in Israel.
Europe, and in particular Britain and Germany, and to some extent France, do not have to listen to Ireland alone, because Spain is a reasonable country. They should listen to the voices of ordinary people right across Europe and they should most certainly take this opportunity now to suspend the agreement mentioned in the motion, to get across to Israel that there are costs involved in cruelty to defenceless people, that there are penalties to be paid for violating international law and that the judgment of history, which will be condign and merciless in the last analysis for what Israel has done and is doing, is not to be delayed to some future date but calls for implementation now.
Therefore, I support this motion.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28