The Government should impose sanctions on Israel in the same way Éamon de Valera did on Italy in 1935 for a “genocidal assault which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopians”.
People Before Profit leader Richard Boyd Barrett made the call as he cited the late former taoiseach and Italy’s imperialist invasion as he introduced his party’s Sanctions against the State of Israel Bill, which calls for Ireland to “break off all economic trade, financial relations with the state of Israel”.
De Valera “felt it was Ireland’s duty as a former colony to impose sanctions on Italy for committing genocide against people in Africa. Surely the Irish Government” could do the same and “impose sanctions on the genocidal state of Israel,” he said in the Dáil.
He spoke of his experience in Israel when he went there as an 18-year-old and “literally stumbled on the first Palestinian intifada and I was horrified”.
At the time there was “no armed resistance by Palestinians” who were living in refugee camps all their lives, members of families who had been driven out in 1948, he said.
The worst violence they were committing was throwing stones at the “fourth most powerful military in the world. And they were brutally shot down, beaten down.
“Armed resistance, the development of Hamas,” did not happen for years after that.
“We have an obligation under the [United Nations] genocide convention” and commitments to international law and human rights, “to impose sanctions on the state of Israel, because it is in violation of those legal commitments”.
“We believe Israel is guilty of genocide, of ethnic cleansing, of collective punishment of the Palestinian people and the systematic, ongoing for decades, violation of the most basic human and civil rights of the Palestinian people.”
Boyd Barrett said: “We are obliged morally and legally to impose sanctions and we need to end the treatment of Israel as a normal state and recognise it is a rogue state.”
His party colleague Paul Murphy called on the Government to give TDs a free vote given the free vote on a Social Democrats abortion reform Bill on Wednesday.
“Of all the issues of conscience in the world, you should allow your own backbench TDs to decide if they want to do something to stop this genocide,” he said.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee said, however, she could not support the legislation.
The Bill “would amount to a blanket prohibition and trade in all goods and certain services between Ireland and Israel”, without any exemptions or derogations.
It “amounts to a boycott, divestment and sanctions approach with respect to Israel. The Government does not support that approach.”
Ireland does not operate a “unilateral domestic sanctions regime” but implements European Union and UN sanctions, she said.
“It’s well understood that EU sanctions are designed carefully to avoid, to mitigate unintended consequences.”
The Minister said: “The strongest and most impactful route remains co-ordination at EU level, particularly in relation to the Israeli settlements and trade connected to the occupied Palestinian territories.”
This is where “Ireland has and will show leadership”. This week EU member states reached political agreement to sanction Israeli extremist settlers and those enabling violence in the West Bank.
The State has also campaigned intensely for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, she said.
Labour justice spokesman Duncan Smith said, however, Ireland was now “becoming a laggard in terms of our support”.
He hit out at the Government’s failure to act on its promise to implement the Occupied Territories Bill preventing trade in goods from illegal Israeli settlements.
Smith said Spain and Slovenia had delivered on this and had “moved ahead”.
“What is the threshold for action on Israel?”, when more than 75,000 people have died in Gaza in the last three years, 2,800 in Lebanon since March, and more than 1,000 in the West Bank with the continued expansion of illegal settlements.
Sinn Féin TD Máire Devine said Friday would be the 78th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. She said the displacement was “continuous and ongoing” and “66 per cent of the Palestinian people are refugees” after “three years of genocide”.
TDs will vote on the legislation next Wednesday.