Following on from the unanimous passage of the Sinn Féin motion falsely alleging the ‘de facto annexation’ of the Palestinian Territories by Israel, Executive Director of the Ireland Israel Alliance Jackie Goodall called it a damaging day for Ireland’s reputation on the world stage and allied Ireland with the most anti-Israel of nations.
Jackie Goodall: “In a single day, Ireland backed a PLO resolution to single out Israel as a violator of health rights at the United Nations and passed, with the support of all politicians and parties in the Dáil, a motion to make Ireland an outlier in the EU. If that wasn’t enough, forty-six TDs backed the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland. On 26th May 2021, Ireland chose to stand against the world’s only Jewish State and the sole democracy in the Middle East and chose instead to side with the likes of Iran, Turkey and Cuba. The past thirty-six hours have been some of the hardest for friends of both Ireland and Israel to witness. Following on from a shamefully vitriolic debate (if it can even be called that), Ireland has pursued policies and actions to target the State of Israel and Jews living in their indigenous homelands of Judea & Samaria. No sooner had the motion passed, the Palestinian lobby and friends in the Dáil and Seanad turned their attention to enacting the so-called Occupied Territories Bill.
“As for the debate on the motion in the Dáil, it was a decisive win for Sinn Féin as the Dáil overwhelmingly endorsed their ignorant and bigoted views on the Jewish State. For so many of us, it was especially sad to see many TDs who profess to be friends of Israel, abandon Israel. No one spoke out to defend Israel. Some mentioned wishes for peace, but all came down on one side – against the State of Israel. The government semantically amended Sinn Féin’s motion, but endorsed its content. This is before we even look to the content of the debate itself. Every charge was laid at the door of the State of Israel, from genocide complete with Holocaust distortions, to ethnic cleansing, to apartheid, to war crimes – the list goes on. Deputy for Kildare South, Patricia Ryan, who previously had to apologise for sharing conspiracy theories about 9/11, engaged in a vile diatribe where she compared the events in Gaza to those from the Holocaust. Deputy Bríd Smith for Dublin South-Central, decried Zionism before attacking charges of antisemitism. This coming from the same political party who expressed solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn in the wake of the EHRC Report findings, and calling the antisemitism charges against Corbyn a witch-hunt. Speech after speech, deputy after deputy, the same false accusations were laid at the door of a State defending itself from a designated Islamist terrorist group.
“Ireland’s actions today do not serve the cause of peace. Rather they embolden Palestinian terrorism, from Hamas war crimes to the PA’s Pay-For-Slay policy. Today’s actions reward Iranian sponsorship of Hamas terrorism from Gaza, and at the same time seeks to punish the right of Israel to defend itself. Israel continues to have friends here in Ireland, but can count few friends amongst the politicians in Dáil and Seanad Éireann. It seems that the political powers that be in Ireland are determined to solidify Ireland’s status as the most anti-Israel Western nation.”
