He finally said it. After 19 months of avoidance and prevarication, taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledged in Dáil Eireann what the public has known since October 2023: the state of Israel is committing genocide in Palestine. “Let us call a spade a spade,” he said earlier this week, “prime minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government, which is made up of extreme far-right elements,” are “committing genocide in Gaza right now.”
Martin said these words as he voted down a bill put forward by Sinn Féin to stop the Central Bank of Ireland facilitating the sale of Israeli government bonds – bonds advertised as a way of supporting the country’s assault on Gaza and the West Bank that has killed at over 50,000 Palestinians, though experts, including The Lancet, believe the figure is much higher.
By a margin of 87 to 75, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and their supporters decided The Restrictive Financial Measures (State of Israel) Bill 2025 will not proceed, despite the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers indicating it would likely be constitutional. Sinn Féin’s proposal, finance minister Paschal Donohue said, is “unworkable” and not in line with EU law. This is the same excuse used to justify delays to, and the ultimate neutering of, the Occupied Territories Bill, legislation that in its original form would ban all trade – not just goods but services too – with businesses operating in settlements recognised as illegal under international law.
And so it goes. Expressions of outrage coupled with material actions that enable the slaughter being condemned. Government has developed considerable skill at this kind of duplicity, claiming the world “needs to do more” for Palestine as it pretends not to notice cargo planes packed with IDF munitions illegally flying overhead, saying future generations will ask what we did to end the killing while continuing to send dual-use goods to Tel Aviv, calling for a permanent ceasefire as the US military uses Shannon Airport as it sees fit.
A question must be asked of Micheál Martin: when did he determine that Israel is carrying out the crime of crimes? Was it after the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling on the matter? Has he read the reports from human rights organisations like Amnesty International, which have documented the atrocities including the mass murder of children? Did he see any of these atrocities firsthand when he travelled to Israel in 2023 and participated in an IDF photo-op, posing next to a hole in a ceiling as Israel attacked hospitals filled with civilians?
Genocide is a moral vortex that drags all nearby actors into complicity. It can only take place when others don’t intervene. This creates a perverse incentive to deny it ever occurred – because admission means indicting oneself. The reasons Micheál Martin has until now refused to use the word genocide in parliament to describe Israel's conduct in Gaza are twofold: he lacks the moral courage to act unilaterally on the international stage; and he would have been conceding that Ireland has failed to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which it has signed and ratified, to prevent and punish this evil act.
Now he has.
‘But what impact will this have on GDP?’
Efforts to obstruct Israel's stated objective of genocide and ethnic cleansing will, in the words of former US ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin have "consequences." Unlike Muhammad Ali, whose voice he likes to mimic for cheap laughs, Micheál Martin isn't encumbered by the weight of his principles. It hasn’t occurred to him the political and financial cost of trying to halt a genocide might be worth paying. Like all members of the comprador class he’s concerned with assisting the exploitation of Ireland by foreign capital. Palestinian lives are a line on a spreadsheet, weighed against the demands of corporate landlords, investment funds and US tech companies with an aversion to paying tax.
This isn't a conspiracy theory – government ministers own up to thinking this way when they believe they won't be identified. "Let's see the extent of the amendments and the pace at which it goes. I'll tell you what, it won't be done before the 17th of March anyway," one told the Irish Times last year. The article outlined concerns about the "growing sense of trepidation about the potential costs in economic, political and diplomatic terms" of the Occupied Territories Bill – which represented the very least Ireland could do when first introduced by senator Frances Black in 2018.
Others are happy to put their face to such barbarous calculations. "In what way will this bill benefit Palestinians?" asked former Irish ambassador to the US Daniel Mulhall last year. "I trust that government has weighed up the pros & cons of moving ahead with this." Economist Dan O'Brien was even more explicit this month: "Government needs to be clear with citizens about potential costs of OTB. US anti-boycott laws could cripple American companies here and encroachment into EU trade competence could bring conflict with Brussels. Fine if the public accepts costs, but debate needed."
Wits like this may congratulate themselves for daring to ask what impact actually doing something to stop a genocide might have on GDP. But genocides have been historically justified with economic rationales, from the indolence of bystanders to the crimes of perpetrators. As Human Rights Watch has documented about Rwanda, Hutu political leaders justified mass murder by claiming they were protecting the "gains of the revolution" – which included lands and jobs seized from Tutsi.
It is only in moments of moral crisis, a friend said to me recently, that we find out who we really are. Millions of ordinary people around the world, seeing genocide broadcast in real-time on social media, tried to do something about it. Those in positions of power made a few sympathetic speeches and engaged in largely symbolic gestures like recognising the state of Palestine while doing all they could to avoid disrupting the systems that make this genocide possible – and profitable for their real constituents.
Accepting that genocide is taking place in Palestine means Micheál Martin – and his colleague Simon Harris who followed his lead yesterday in the Dáil chamber, accusing Israel of the same thing – can no longer cling to the pretence he doesn’t know what Ireland is helping make possible. Every day he fails to act is culpability in the attempted destruction of an entire people.
