THE DECISION by the Israeli regime on Sunday to close its embassy in Dublin brought a swift response from Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris, who said the move was an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to distract from the killing of children in Gaza by Israeli forces.
Harris, responding to the Israeli complaints about the ‘extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government’, said: ‘You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible.’
He continued: ‘You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths what we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People being left to starve and humanitarian aid not flowing.’
Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar hit back using the accusation always adopted by Zionists and their imperialist supporters that Harris was Ireland’s ‘anti-Semitic prime minister’ for raising the issue of genocide and the deliberate starvation of millions of men, women and children in Gaza.
The most recent figures released by the Gaza health ministry, and verified by the United Nations, show that the number of people killed in Gaza in the past 14 months now exceeds 45,000.
This week, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) Cindy McCain warned that two million people in Gaza are suffering from ‘acute hunger’ as humanitarian aid was struggling to reach them. In a post on X, McCain said that last month only one-third of trucks carrying WFP aid managed to enter Gaza, with North Gaza hit the hardest, with ‘just two trucks’ making it through to ‘thousands of hungry people’.
Two million people being deliberately starved represents almost the entire population of Gaza, which is estimated to be 2.23 million – this is genocide and no attempt to cover it up through accusations of anti-Semitism can work.
The real source of Israeli anger at Ireland is that last May Ireland, along with Spain and Norway, formally recognised the state of Palestine. The recognition of the state of Palestine by three major EU countries was a huge blow to Israel and its imperialist backers, as it opened the floodgates for other countries to follow.
Infuriated by this, Israel immediately recalled its ambassadors from all three countries.
Now it has gone a step further, with Netanyahu’s gangster regime driven into a frenzy over the Irish government’s announcement of its support for South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the Zionist regime of genocide.
Israel, since its establishment in 1948 through a campaign of terror to drive Palestinians from their land, has only survived as an outpost of imperialism in the Middle East through the economic, military and diplomatic support from the US and its allies in the UK and Europe.
With diplomatic support under pressure from the mass opposition of workers and youth, governments are finding it increasingly difficult to uphold economic ties.
In October, the Irish government announced plans to pass the Occupied Territories Bill banning trade with illegal settlements in the occupied Palestine territories, while in November, Harris said that Irish authorities would detain Netanyahu if he travelled to Ireland after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant on charges of genocide.
In the UK, the Labour government has refused to end the supply of military components used to bomb and murder Palestinians and refused to break off diplomatic and financial trade with the genocidal Israeli regime, while using the same slur of ‘anti-Semitism’ to attack the millions of workers and youth who support Palestine.
The time has come for the working class in the UK to follow the lead of Ireland by immediately forcing the TUC to call a general strike to impose a complete ban on all weapons and financial support to the Israeli government, close down the Israeli embassy in London, and give recognition to the independent state of Palestine.
It means bringing down the Starmer-led Labour government, and replacing it with a workers’ government that will recognise the state of Palestine and provide it with all the aid and arms required to defeat the Zionist occupation with the victory of the Palestinian revolution.