It should come as no surprise that the Israeli foreign minister should accuse the Irish Taoiseach of antisemitism. After all, the spokesman for the same Minister’s department of foreign affairs levelled the exact same charge against the members of the Seanad who voted in the majority to pass the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, 2018.
Those alleged antisemites included Senator David Norris, Senator Ivana Bacik, and myself, among others. The accusation was a grossly defamatory slur on decent people
The Bill was passed at second stage by Seanad Eireann on 8th December 2018, long before the barbaric and unforgivable Hamas war crime of the October 7th 2023 invasion of southern Israel. The Bill was solely concerned with making it illegal to import goods, services, and resources into Ireland originating in settlement enterprises established in lands unlawfully seized by occupying powers, as defined by international law.
At the time, our cause of concern was the state-sponsored or state-assisted annexation of lands by Israel in the West Bank and by Russia in eastern Ukraine. But the Bill was of general application to occupied territories recognised as such by competent tribunals for the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
At stake was the need to stand up to de facto annexation of territory in breach of international law. In the West Bank, there had been a consistent pattern of de facto annexation of lands by illegal Israeli settlers granted armed protection and encouragement by, and economic integration into, the state of Israel. The process has been accelerated and consolidated by governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Their unstated but generally understood strategy was to make the internationally two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue practically impossible.
Ireland has always insisted on the right of Israel to exist and to defend itself in accordance with the internationally recognised boundaries as those provided for in UN Resolution 242. We have never accepted the validity of any formal or informal expansion of Israel into lands in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. We have been consistently of that position for the last half-century; that is the international consensus accepted by the UN. Likewise, Ireland upholds international law in relation to the duties and rights of the civilian population of occupied territories.
It is now plain that the Netanyahu government is intent on the destruction of any basis for a two-state solution. Part of its strategy was to undermine the position of the Palestinian authority as an interlocutor and as an entity capable of negotiating that two-state solution at international level.
It had been a consistent strategy of the Netanyahu governments to encourage the existence of Hamas as a movement in Gaza with a view to diminishing the status of the authorities in Ramallah. The problem with that strategy was that it ignored what was previously thought as impossible – namely that Hamas extremists would prepare and execute a barbaric, murderous ground invasion of Israel itself such as happened 14 months ago.
I warned here and indeed spoke in Seanad Eireann about the real choices faced by Israel in the aftermath of October 7th. The sheer scale of killing unleashed by Israel in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of at least 40,000 innocent civilians. Deaths by disease, malnutrition, and by dislocation of elderly and ill patients will probably never be quantified. Who will count the number of limbless, sightless, maimed, and deranged survivors? Who will rebuild the homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, that all now lie in rubble there? Was that all done without long-term consequence?
If the Irish Government is guilty of anything, it is guilty of delay. By deliberately foot-tripping the Occupied Territories Bill in 2018 by a mixture of unlawful stratagems including the false invocation of imaginary EU legal objections and the withholding of a government money message in the Dáil, it showed weakness and cowardice.
Those of us in the Seanad who by great majority supported the Occupied Territories Bill well knew that the practical effect of its enactment would be very small but that it represented a clear legislative statement and vindication of fundamental principles of international law and a peaceful world order in the face of forcible annexation and dispossession.
Opposition to radical and extremist Zionism is not and never can be equated to antisemitism. Such opposition is shared by many Jews here and abroad. When the elected government of Israel resorts to such a defamatory equation, it undermines and devalues the very meaning of antisemitism.
Those of us who abhor the existential threat to the very existence of the state of Israel represented by Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran refuse to be branded antisemites for standing by international law including military defenders’ duties of proportionality and humanity in relation to the innocent and defenceless.
Where too now, are the hostages in the name of whom so much carnage occurred? Whose survival, I wonder, ultimately mattered more – theirs or Netanyahu’s?