‘Apartheid settler colonial state’ Israel built on ethnic cleansing of Palestinians: Irish lawmaker

LONDON

Israel is an “apartheid settler colonial state” whose very foundations are built on “ethnic cleansing” and the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, according to an Irish politician.

“The point about Israel is, as a state since 1948, (it) has been built on ethnic cleansing, on terrorism against the Palestinian people, on illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, on constant stealing of Palestinian land, cleansing a Palestinian people from their homes and their villages,” Richard Boyd Barrett, a lawmaker from the People Before Profit party, told Anadolu.

He said Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, which has now killed nearly 11,300 Palestinians, including over 7,700 women and children, and injured around 29,000 others, is a “genocide” littered with “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

Thousands of buildings, including hospitals, mosques and churches, have also been damaged or destroyed in Israel’s relentless air and ground attacks on the besieged Palestinian enclave since Oct. 7.

​​​​​​​The Israeli death toll is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.

“This is the logic of an apartheid settler colonial state and it has no place in the civilized world,” he said.

“It is difficult to see the death and destruction, the slaughter that Israel is inflicting on the entire population of Gaza. These are war crimes. These are crimes against humanity. This is genocide. This is ethnic cleansing.”

Slamming Western leaders for their stance in favor of Israel, Barrett said they are “trying to lie to people because they know that Israel has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.”

“They know it. But they have chosen to give Israel impunity because it serves Western interests,” he said.

“(US President) Joe Biden made this very clear in comments he made a few years ago where he said, ‘If Israel didn’t exist, the United States would invent it.’ This is the real relationship. The big Western powers using the violence of Israel to subjugate the Palestinian people and to control this region, and we have to call this out.”

‘Support Palestinian resistance and build solidarity movements’

Barrett hailed the ongoing mass pro-Palestine movements across the world, saying Israel’s atrocities and the West’s support for that “will only stop when it is forced to stop.”

“We need to urgently, and we are, building a movement to overwhelm our governments for this shameful collusion with the crimes that Israel is committing,” he said.

“When the governments are justifying this, we don’t need them as governments anymore. We need the people to rise up, as they are across the world.”

The Irish lawmaker said people must keep increasing pressure on their governments, urging them “to demand the expulsion of Israeli ambassadors, to demand sanctions against the state that can commit these atrocities, to demand the arrest of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his gang of criminals.”

All of these actions, he stressed, are critical to “physically impede the ability of Israel to carry on these war crimes against the people of Gaza.”

“We did bring down apartheid South Africa, the Algerian people did free themselves from colonialism, the Irish freed themselves, largely, from British colonial rule,” said Barrett.

“It can be done, but everybody in the world who believes in decency and justice and fairness needs to stand with the Palestinian people in this dark hour.”

He said it is imperative to explain the realities of the situation to “ordinary people in the West, because ... most people are horrified by this.”

“We need to explain the truth of this apartheid state, of this settler colonial state, and build a movement that will sweep out of power the governments that justify these war crimes and these atrocities,” said Barrett.