ON THURSDAY, THE Dáil debated the Sanctions against the State of Israel Bill 20251, and there will be a vote of TDs on the Bill next Wednesday, 20 May.
My Bill is the first time a proposal of full economic sanctions on the state of Israel itself has come before the Dáil, proposing to prohibit all trade, investment, financial dealings and state-linked economic activity with the entire Israeli regime.
Previous sanctions bills proposed in the Dáil have focused on trade and investment in the occupied territories.
For the past two and a half years, the world has watched the Israeli state inflict a genocidal massacre in Gaza, slaughtering more than 70,000 people, most of whom are women and children, and displacing almost the entire population of more than two million people.
The Israeli military has destroyed 90% of housing in Gaza and devastated most of the civilian infrastructure, schools, colleges, hospitals, water and power plants, creating an almost indescribable humanitarian catastrophe.
Israeli political and military leaders have openly incited the horror visited on Gaza, a fact that contributed to the decision of the International Court of Justice to rule, as early as January 2024, that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.
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Yet despite the unspeakable horror that has unfolded since then, no sanctions whatsoever have been imposed by Ireland or the EU. This is in stark contrast with the sanctions that were immediately imposed on Russia in 2022 when it illegally invaded Ukraine and in 2014 when it annexed Crimea.
The bill that will be voted on next Wednesday seeks to implement the same kind of sanctions that were imposed on Russia and, in previous decades, the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Growing trade with Israel
Israel’s exports to Ireland have increased from €198 million in 2020 to €3.3 billion in 2024, and Ireland is now Israel’s second-biggest trading partner. This week, The Currency reported that in 2024, at the peak of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Department of Trade authorised the export of €20 million worth of military-capable equipment to the Israeli Defence Forces or Israel’s Ministry of Defence, organisations centrally involved in mass slaughter in Gaza at that time.
It is absolutely shameful that after three years of a genocidal massacre of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel and decades of systematic apartheid and ethnic cleansing, Ireland continues to do billions of euros’ worth of trade every year with the regime guilty of these crimes. It makes a mockery of the government’s claimed commitment to International law.
Our Bill will prohibit trade with Israel, any business dealings with Israel, and the provision of new loans or credit to the State of Israel.
It will also prohibit dealing in Israeli state and Central Bank bonds. In violation of international law and in direct breach of the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee Report on the Israeli Bonds, the Central Bank transferred, on Israel’s request, the Israeli bonds prospectus to the Commission de Secteur du Financier in Luxembourg, thereby facilitating the sale of Israeli bonds in the EU. The Irish Central Bank has said it carried this out under its legal obligations, but it is unconscionable that the sale of Israeli bonds has been facilitated in this way. Our Bill will ensure this ends.
Resisting the smears
Inevitably, the Bill will face bad-faith charges of antisemitism. This is a smear and a lie.
Reports published in recent years by multiple human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Bet’Selem and the UN Special Rapporteur to Palestine have accused Israel of decades of ongoing crimes against humanity perpetrated against Palestinians, particularly the crime of Apartheid. The genocide in Gaza is a crime against humanity that has been directed by the Israeli state, and that state should therefore face comprehensive sanctions.
Challenging genocide and an apartheid system is the opposite of antisemitism, and we will not allow the smears to deter us. Indeed, as a country that has suffered under a brutal system of colonial oppression ourselves, which was then exported by the British Empire from Ireland to Palestine, we have a particular duty to stand with our Palestinian sisters and brothers.
Fulfilling legal obligations
The Bill will sanction Israel for its multiple violations of international law and its complete denial of human and civil rights to the Palestinian people. These sanctions should be placed on the state of Israel, not just for the ongoing genocide in Gaza but also for the last 80 years of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid, of a systematic genocidal campaign across Palestine and the complete denial of any rights to the Palestinian people.
The Bill aims to ensure that the government finally acts on its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention, which demands that states do all in their power to punish and prevent the crime of genocide, and its obligations under the UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the orders of the International Court of Justice in South Africa v Israel, the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion on the occupied Palestinian Territory, and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
Disgracefully, despite their clear moral and legal obligations, the government has now indicated their intention to vote against this bill.
TDs who vote against this Bill are voting to keep Ireland economically tied to a state actively committing genocide and guilty of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and countless violations of international law.
I therefore urge people who are horrified by the crimes of Israel against the Palestinian people to contact their local TDs to demand they support the Sanctions against the State of Israel Bill 2025 when it is voted on this coming Wednesday, 20 May and to join the demonstration at 5.30pm at the gates of the Dáil on Kildare St.
Richard Boyd Barrett is an Irish People Before Profit–Solidarity politician and a TD for Dún Laoghaire.