IRISH ANTI WAR MOVEMENT (IAWM) PRESS RELEASE, 17 July 2025
- SHAMEFUL DECISION BY MINISTER JIM O’ CALLAGHAN TO NOT ALLOW PALESTINIAN CHILDREN INTO IRELAND TO PLAY FOOTBALL
- ESCALATION OF ZIONIST PROPAGANDA AND INFLUENCE IN IRELAND AMID WORSENING GENOCIDE
- IRISH GOVERNMENT MUST JOIN THE 12 STATES FROM THE HAGUE GROUP TO END ISRAEL’S IMPUNITY
- ALL OUT FOR PALESTINE IN DUBLIN ON SATURDAY – SANCTION ISRAEL NOW!
The last few weeks have seen further complicity by the Irish Government in bowing to pro-Zionist pressure amid the ongoing escalating genocide of Palestinians.
Defence Minister Jim O Callaghan has scandalously denied children from the West Bank their chance to play football in Ireland by blocking the granting of their visas. The excuses are beyond puny given the openness in which Ukrainian refugee children were rightly welcomed to Ireland. The volunteers from the GAA here in Ireland did a marvellous job in organising host families, a packed programme of games and a planned visit to the Áras, thus showing the depth of solidarity throughout Ireland with the plight of Palestinians. This short visit would have made such a difference to these oppressed children from the West Bank where ethnic cleansing – over 40,000 displaced so far – and daily attacks by violent settlers have increased exponentially in recent months.
Meanwhile Irish Zionist representatives were afforded a public platform at a Dáil Committee to completely misrepresent the intentions of the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB). Former Defence Minister’s Alan Shatter’s outrageous claims of anti-Semitism – comparing the OTB to the actions of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s – were beyond contempt and should be met with the derision they deserve. The IBEC has also misrepresented the OTB claiming it will negatively impact business in Ireland, while ignoring the fact that similar legislation has been required of businesses for Ukraine since the Russian invasion of 2014. The double standards are truly galling.
The pressure to abandon the OTB continued with US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee condemning Ireland – calling the implementation of the OTB “an act of diplomatic intoxication” – a deeply offensive, inaccurate, racist caricature from a racist, bigoted American Christian Zionist.
This all happens while the slaughter and oppression continue in Gaza, reaching new heights of depravity as the Israeli Government and its military intensify the killing spree and force Palestinians southwards towards the destroyed city of Rafah into a restricted so-called mis-named, yet to be constructed “humanitarian city” – a proposal that even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has identified as a “concentration camp”. Now there is a more realistic reference to Nazi Germany.
Marnie Holborow of the IAWM Steering Committee said:
“The context of this hardening of Zionist propaganda is the clear intensification of the genocide of the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. The horrific murder of starving children queuing for aid in Gaza has become so obviously inhuman that Zionists everywhere are upping their intervention to yet again distract us all from the horrors of Israel’s western-backed genocide.”
The Hague Group Conference in Bogota on Wednesday offered some hope and a way forward. Representatives of over 30 states, including Ireland, attended. Twelve of these states, not including Ireland sadly, issued a 6-point plan to “break the ties of complicity with Israel’s campaign of devastation in Palestine”. We must pressurise the Irish Government to adopt these measures.
The IAWM rejects the legal objections that the government and its allies raise. We see its stance as an outright, disgraceful refusal to pass this minimal sanction.
In this context, Saturday’s IPSC National Protest in Dublin needs to be massive. Delaying the OTB – a weak enough measure in the context of the escalating 21-month genocide – is simply unacceptable.
Jim Roche, PRO of the IAWM said:
“The Government’s refusal to immediately pass the OTB and to adopt the Hague Group measures is yet again more proof that it is cowardly and concerned more than anything else not to rock the US and EU’s complicity with Israel’s clear intention to wipe Palestine off the map. The FF/FG government is also in denial about what most Irish people seek. The Irish people will never give up and we will be on the streets of Dublin yet again this Saturday calling for sanctions against the genocidal state of Israel and for justice and freedom for the oppressed Palestinians.”
ENDS
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