Pro-Palestine
Activists
Mr Carroll: I
commend the recent work of pro-Palestine activists across the
country who have taken action to say that we should not normalise
apartheid and genocide. In recent days, that action was targeted
on the US company Red Hat, which has strong connections with the
Israeli military and the Israeli occupation. Despite all the
attempts on this island and across the world to mischaracterise
the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the actions
with regard to Red Hat show what the movement is all about: at
its heart, it is a peace, justice and solidarity movement.
In the face of GAA upper management wanting to put their heads in
the sand in the hope that they could get away with hosting that
company, activists, importantly, got organised online and out in
the street outside places like Casement Park in my constituency.
I commend the activists in the Ireland Palestine Solidarity
Campaign (IPSC), Gaels Against Genocide and every individual and
organisation who came out to take a stand against the company.
There must not and cannot be business as usual for companies that
profit while they are connected to the Israeli war machine, with
its ongoing killing and slaughter.
More important than ever, we need to keep up our activism as we
approach a year of the genocide and scholasticide. Despite the
brutality of the war launched by Israel and, as reported by 'The
Lancet', the estimated 186,000 people killed, Palestinians will
not disappear. The Zionist project is fracturing as the myth of
Israel being a liberal democracy has been exposed as a lie in
front of the whole world.
UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese rightly said:
"It is unavoidable for Israel to become a pariah".
Our job in Ireland is to say that loud and clear and to expose
the true nature of the apartheid state and its war machine. My
message to the activists is this: keep being active, keep
marching and keep protesting until Palestine is free.
