Government must stand firm on Israel's illegal occupation and genocide in Gaza Strip
What we are witnessing in Gaza today is one such horrific moment, a genocide that has resulted in the greatest humanitarian catastrophe witnessed since the Second World War.
The haunting images emerging daily from Gaza remind us of stark horrors from the 20th century, horrors that once shocked the world into pledging 'never again'.
However, here we are once more. Close to 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, including more than 17,000 innocent children. More than 139,000 have been wounded. Thousands of children have been left orphaned.
Israel has made Gaza a graveyard for children, women, men, medical staff, humanitarian workers, and journalists.
An entire population is being starved. Famine is occurring directly as a result of Israel's brutal, illegal, and cruel blocking of aid.
The UN has described Gaza as the hungriest place on Earth, the only territory on Earth where the whole population is at risk of famine. Israel has obstructed aid to such a degree that only a drip feed gets into the starving and malnourished population.
On May 19, the Israeli cabinet approved a decision to allow 'basic' food into Gaza. A drop in an ocean and the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities continue to prevent the delivery of large-scale humanitarian aid.
The near total collapse of Gaza's healthcare system is severely impacting pregnant women, new mothers, and newborns, depriving them of their rights to maternity healthcare
Israel is weaponising water, continuing to destroy water facilities, and cutting electricity needed to pump water and power desalination plants. Each day, we get to a point of horror we thought unimaginable.
Children bear the brunt of Israel's genocidal actions. Child malnutrition is surging, doubling since March.
Just as Israel has ensured the almost collapse of the healthcare system, 90,000 women and children desperately need access to care for acute malnutrition. Some 10 children a day are losing one or both limbs. Israel is maiming a generation.
Weaponising humanitarian aid
The shameful Israeli and US-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution point are putting a terrorised population at further risk.
It is, it seems, just another way of killing Palestinians, with nearly 900 desperate and hungry Gazans killed trying to access aid.
UN entities and humanitarian organisations, including ActionAid, have unanimously rejected the scheme.
It violates core humanitarian principles and forces Palestinians into militarised zones to access life-saving assistance. The plan as outlined effectively weaponises humanitarian aid, turning it into a tool of oppression, further entrenching Israeli government control over Gaza, and continuing its long-term displacement and collective punishment of Palestinians there.
Now, another dark and horrifying layer may be added to this devastating humanitarian crisis.
The Israeli government has reportedly proposed setting up an internment camp in the Gaza Strip, a fenced-in zone under military control where thousands of Palestinians would be corralled under surveillance, stripped of freedom, and essentially imprisoned without trial or rights. This would effectively be a concentration camp, and it rightly has provoked widespread outrage with accusations of ethnic cleansing and violations of international law.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the situation has reached a breaking point.
Palestinian families are being displaced, denied access to essential services, and left unprotected. One year after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territory to be unlawful and ordered its unconditional and rapid withdrawal, Israeli authorities have escalated annexation, settlement expansion, land seizures, and violence, with devastating consequences for Palestinians.
From January to June 2025, Israeli settlers carried out an average of four attacks per day, injuring 340 Palestinians, against 148 during the same period in 2024 — a rise of 130%.
Over 90% of settler violence complaints are closed without indictment
This is the backdrop for the crucial debates that just concluded on the Occupied Territories Bill by the Oireachtas committee on foreign affairs and trade.
The proposed bill would be a hugely important, but modest, step in accountability for egregious violations of international law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It must include both goods and services.
Those opposing the bill say it will violate US federal law, will damage our standing with the US, and will be bad for Irish business. All arguments that have been eloquently debunked in the committee debates.
The overwhelming majority of companies here have no involvement at all in the illegal Israeli settlements, just as they're not doing business with Russian entities destroying Ukraine.
Economic impact
The bill is a modest pressure with no evidence to show that it will have a negative economic impact.
Nor does it amount to a boycott of Israel, or a breach of US law, as it only relates to illegal settlements that Israel has taken from Palestinians. The argument that the bill would violate EU law also fell to pieces this week.
In the context of a shamefully weak overall response by the EU to its review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, one measure it did put forward was the ability of states to legislate nationally to ban trade with illegal settlements. Regardless of the above, we must take a stand and hold onto humanity for dear life.
Ireland must hold its nerve, even in the face of opposition from the US
We have obligations under international law. Just like with apartheid South Africa, we must stand against apartheid Israel.
Ireland is not isolated in its action. The emergency summit hosted last week by Colombia and South Africa under the Hague Group framework, which was aimed at co-ordinating multilateral legal, diplomatic, and economic measures to halt Israel's military offensive in Gaza, was hugely significant.
Delegations from more than 30 countries, as well as UN officials such as special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, attended the summit.
A suite of actions on holding Israel to account are now on the table.
Ireland — please stay strong. To kill, starve, cage, and erase an entire population is genocide. This is so much more than politics. This is about international law. This is about humanity.
Karol Balfe is CEO of ActionAid Ireland and supports the humanitarian response in Gaza through ActionAid Palestine and partners
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Irish Examiner
38 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
Israeli air strikes in Gaza Strip leave at least 25 dead, health officials say
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Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Rising number of doctors among hundreds of medical staff detained in Gaza, say rights groups
Twenty-eight doctors from Gaza are being held inside Israeli prisons, eight of whom are senior consultants in surgery, orthopaedics, intensive care, cardiology and paediatrics, according to data from Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical organisation. Twenty-one of those detained have been held for more than 400 days. HWW said none had been charged with any crimes by the Israeli authorities. Three healthcare workers have been detained since the start of July. On Monday, the Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli undercover force detained Dr Marwan al-Hams, head of Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip. His whereabouts are unknown, and the Israeli authorities have yet to publish a statement on his detention. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that two of its workers were taken into detention from a facility sheltering staff and their families in Dier al-Balah; one remains in Israeli custody. According to the WHO, Israel has arrested and detained more than 300 healthcare workers since the the war between Hamas and Israel began in October 2023. HWW puts this figure higher, at over 400. Muath Alser, director of HWW, said: 'Many of the health workers were arrested at their work sites, and they remain held for months – often without communication, being denied medical care when needed, and suffering from terrible detention conditions. We urge people in power to pressure Israel to release those health workers still under unlawful detention.' Overwhelmed hospitals are already struggling to function, while increasing hunger among medical staff in Gaza has left many too weak to provide urgent medical care to malnourished and injured civilians, doctors have told the Guardian and the Arabic Reporters for Investigative Journalism. In February, the Guardian published detailed accounts from senior Palestinian doctors held and then released from Israeli detention who reported being tortured, beaten and humiliated during their time in prison. Those still being held by the Israeli authorities include Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, who has been detained at Israel's Ofer prison since December 2024. Earlier this week his lawyer told Sky News his health was deteriorating and that he was being beaten and tortured. In a statement to the Guardian, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accused medical staff in Gaza, including doctors, of involvement in Hamas terror activity. It did not provide any evidence to substantiate the claim. 'In the context of IDF activity in combat zones, individuals suspected of involvement in terror activity are arrested and investigated. Those found not to be involved in terror activity are released. 'A regrettable outcome of Hamas' exploitation of hospitals is the involvement of medical staff, including doctors, directly in Hamas' terror activity. Put plainly, the IDF is not interested in medical staff vis a vis their roles as medical professionals, but due to their potential involvement in Hamas terror,' said the statement. Two senior doctors are known to have died in Israeli detention: Dr Iyad al-Rantisi, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Kamal Adwan hospital, died at Shikma prison; Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedic department at al-Shifa hospital, died shortly after being transferred to Ofer prison in April 2024. Former detainees claim he died from torture and had suffered severe sexual violence in the hours before his death. Their bodies have not yet been returned to their families. The detention of medical staff from Gaza in Israeli prisons has been condemned by the WHO and the UN who have called for their immediate release. Reports of torture, violence and psychological abuse of healthcare workers while in detention have been verified by the UN and published in reports by organisations such as HWW, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
Irish Independent
7 hours ago
- Irish Independent
‘Their little bodies are shutting down' – Gaza on brink of total collapse as mass starvation ravages every corner of society
Doctors are famished to the point that they have dizzy spells as they make their rounds, medics say, and the journalists documenting their caseloads are often too weak to even walk to the clinics. For months, aid agencies had warned of the coming crisis, as Israel halted the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip before attempting to replace UN relief efforts with distribution points inside military zones. It was a move Israeli officials said was aimed at pressuring Hamas, whose fighters attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and continue to hold about 50 hostages who were abducted that day, about 20 of whom are believed to be still alive. But testimonies from doctors, relief workers and Gazans this week make it clear that a worst-case scenario is finally unfolding: Nearly one-in-three people are going multiple days without eating, according to the United Nations, and hospitals are reporting rising deaths from malnutrition and starvation. In a video filmed on Tuesday inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, families fretted over babies with distended bellies and tiny fists that they clenched as they cried. In one of the newly established malnutrition rooms, the mothers and children were so quiet that the loudest sound came from a pair of fans that beat weakly in the cloying heat. The Gaza Health Ministry said on Wednesday that 10 people had died of starvation in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of those killed by hunger to 111 since the start of the war. Among them was six-week-old Yousef al-Safadi, so small in photographs from the silver table of the hospital morgue that the white sleepsuit peeled back to show how his jutting ribs dwarfed his slight body. The International Rescue Committee, a global relief and development organisation, said on Wednesday that its teams had reported an increase in the number of children being rushed to hospitals because of malnutrition in recent days. 'Their small bodies are shutting down. They can't breathe; their immune systems are collapsing,' said Scott Lea, the organisation's acting country director for the Palestinian territories. Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for the UN children's agency Unicef, said rising rates of child malnutrition were preventable, but that the health care system needed to treat it was 'running on fumes or hit by strikes'. Throughout the war, which has killed more than 59,000 people in Gaza, according to the local health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, Israel has imposed severe restrictions on the amount of food and other aid entering the enclave. At times, it allowed more trucks to enter, including during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. But on March 2, Israel reimposed its blockade, lifting it only partially in May after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 'pictures of mass starvation' could cost his country the support of the United States and other allies. In a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, an Israeli military official said there was a 'lack of food security inside Gaza', but blamed a failure to distribute aid on the UN. 'There is no limit. The crossings are open – just bring the trucks and take the aid,' he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, in line with the rules of the briefing. 'We're seeing the pictures also, and I want to tell you that we are taking it very seriously,' he said. 'We are analysing the number of calories per capita inside Gaza.' The UN says Israeli authorities are the 'sole decision-makers' on how much, aid enters Gaza, as well as the type of supplies that are allowed in. 'Once inside Gaza, movement requires navigating an obstacle course of coordination with Israeli forces, through active hostilities, traveling on damaged roads, and often being forced to wait at holding points or pass through areas controlled by criminal gangs,' UN relief chief Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council in New York last week. Gaza's ability to make its own food has been almost entirely destroyed as Israeli military operations have wiped out farmlands and factories. As the summer heat bears down, hungry and thirsty civilians have run out of reserves to fall back on. Palestinians in the enclave are reliant instead on humanitarian aid that most people under Israel's new system cannot easily access. According to local health authorities, more than 1,000 people have been shot dead racing through territory controlled by the Israeli military toward distribution points run by US security contractors, where supplies are first-come, first-served. When victims of Israeli strikes, shelling or gunfire reach the hospitals, photographs show, their bodies are often visibly emaciated. In Gaza City's Sabra district, Ayat al-Soradi (25) said she was so malnourished during her pregnancy this year that she gave birth to her twins, Ahmed and Mazen, two months early. They each weighed about one kilo, and for almost a month, she had watched over them in their incubators as the nurses fed them with powdered milk. But even the hospital staff were running out of food. The flour, milk, eggs and meat that were available during an earlier ceasefire had disappeared from the market. A bag of flour and lentils could fetch almost $200 (€170). In WhatsApp groups, Palestinian families bartered for baby formula like the one doctors recommended for Ahmed and Mazen. The family could barely afford it once the twins were discharged. Ahmed died 13 days later. 'He was two months old,' Soradi said. And feeding Mazen alone was still a struggle. His baby formula was almost prohibitively expensive, when the family could find it at all, Soradi said. She mixed it with rice water to make it last longer, but the child barely grew. Ten days ago, he was readmitted to the hospital at a weight of 3 kilos as he ran a fever and struggled to breathe. Relief workers say parents throughout Gaza regularly forgo meals, and sometimes days' worth of food, to feed their children. In Deir al-Balah, Taghred Jumaa, a 55-year-old women's rights activist who described herself as relatively better off than most Palestinians in Gaza because she still had a salary, said that rationing the family's food meant her hair was falling out. Parts of her body felt numb, she said. In the northern district of Sheikh Radwan, relatives of two-month-old Sham Emkat said on Wednesday that she had been pronounced dead at 11.30pm the night before in al-Rantisi Hospital. In an open letter published on Wednesday, 115 organisations, including Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Corps and Save the Children, said Israel's blockade and ongoing military operations were pushing Gaza's more than two million people, including relief workers, toward starvation. Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that colleagues had begun receiving 'SOS messages from staff who are hungry themselves, who are exhausted themselves'. In conversations with Washington Post reporters this week, doctors, health officials and aid workers have all apologised for their lack of focus, citing hunger. In a statement this week, a group of journalists from the Agence France-Presse news agency warned that the Israeli blockade and subsequent hunger crisis had made conditions for their Palestinian colleagues in Gaza 'untenable'. The AFP's principal photographer, identified as Bashar, had posted to his Facebook page, saying that he no longer had the strength to work. 'Since AFP was founded in August 1944, some of our journalists were killed in conflict, others were wounded or made prisoner, but there is no record of us ever having had to watch our colleagues starving to death,' the statement said.
