“Our duty to do everything we can to stop this genocide” - speech by Paul Murphy TD
The following is a transcript of a speech delivered outside the Department of Foreign Affairs by RISE member and TD Paul Murphy, following a march in support. Paul highlights how capitalism and imperialism is the root cause of the Palestinian oppression and genocide, states what position socialists should take in supporting Palestinians, and calls for global mass mobilisation as part of the struggle against the apartheid regime of Israel. Some sentences have been edited, removed or combined for readability purposes.
Like everybody else here, my social media feed, every morning, every hour that I look at it, is filled with what should be unimaginable horror. But one particular thing struck me this morning. There was a status update by a doctor in Al Nasr Children's Hospital in Gaza. He wrote "we said goodbye to the children, left them on the equipment as we all left the hospital under the Israeli soldiers' threats. There are more than a hundred and fifty children in the hospital who are left to their fate and there are no staff left in the hospital."
It wasn't enough for Israel to bomb hospitals from the sky: they had to surround a children's hospital with tanks. The soldiers went in and told the staff, effectively at gunpoint, to leave. They're killing children - one hundred and sixty every day - openly and brazenly in front of the entire world. They're bombing hospitals, apartment blocks, ambulances, refugee convoys and fishing boats, all with the support of Genocide Joe in the U.S., Rishi Sunak in Britain, and the majority of the European Union.
Capitalism Unmasked
It reveals the brutal, inhuman logic of this disgusting Capitalist system that we have. They are happy to see thousands of children murdered as long as their ally in the Middle East can sustain itself. It is why I am a socialist. It is why I believe in fighting against a world based on imperialism and capitalism, and why I fight for a human, socialist world where people's needs come first.
But all of that horror, the killing of children and innocents, is described by the media and the world's most powerful politicians as the right of Israel to defend itself. We now know what "defence" of an apartheid state looks like.
Photo by Dermot Kelly , check out his website and services at www.dermotkelly.com
We should ask the question: when will the Palestinians finally be given the right to defend themselves? What will it take for Ursula von der Leyen, Joe Biden, or Rishi Sunak, to arrive in Gaza, or the West Bank, to claim the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves? Is seventy five years of ethnic cleansing, of displacement, of apartheid, enough? Or seventeen years of a brutal blockade and siege of Gaza? What about ten thousand murdered, most of them women and children, in a single month?
Of course they never will show any support for Palestinians as their oppressor, Israel, supports the interests of imperialism in the Middle East. This is why it is vital that those of us who support the Palestinian people say they have a right to resist. We must support Palestinians in their right to rise up against occupation - not targeting civilians of course - with a mass popular resistance, including armed resistance, against the Israeli Defense Forces. Those of us outside Palestine have not only a right but a duty to do everything we can to stop this genocide.
An International Struggle
There's an old slogan of the Palestinian left which states "the road to Jerusalem begins in Cairo, Damascus and Amman." However, right now, as the bombs rain down on Gaza, that road also begins in Dublin, Belfast, London, and other cities right around the world where millions of people are mobilising. In spite of increased attempts of political repression in many countries including Britain and Germany, millions of people are out marching globally. People are fighting for peace, justice and liberation for Palestine while their leaders fund the Israeli genocide.
This is why we need tens of thousands on the streets in Dublin in a national demonstration next week. Every single one of us needs to do whatever we can: give out leaflets, talk to our friends, send WhatsApp messages. Spread the word that this is the big one. Next Saturday we need to have tens of thousands on the streets. We need local boycott actions like what was achieved in Derry: they gathered outside O'Neill's and demanded that O'Neill's remove Puma products that are complicit in the apartheid regime and the occupation. And O'Neill's responded by removing Puma products. Now we have to say to O'Neill's across the island that they must no longer stock Puma products in any of their stores.
Pressuring the government
To finish with a message to the Irish government: in the face of genocide taking place in full view of the world, a few hinted words of criticism are not enough. They're nowhere near enough. We need action to isolate Israel, to apply pressure on them to stop the genocide and the occupation, and to show real solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Irish government must bring a case, as they did against Russia, against Israel in the international criminal court. They have the power to do it; they must use that power. We need to stop the use of Shannon airport by the U.S. military.
We need economic sanctions against Israel. And we need to kick the Israeli ambassador out. But the government would much rather keep quiet to avoid upsetting their ally Genocide Joe by challenging U.S. imperialism. So we have to make them do it. We need thousands of people outside the Dáil, surrounding it, on Wednesday at 6PM, pressuring the government to vote to expel the ambassador.
