31 May 2010
The Communist Party of Ireland offers its deepest sympathy to the families and friends of those murdered on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. To the remaining international humanitarian volunteers on the flotilla we express our admiration for your courage and honour, which is in stark contrast with the appeasement policy of the Irish Government and the Western powers.
The tragic events now unfolding in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea have once again focused world attention on the savage and brutal policies that are inflicted daily on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government. That same brutality is now being inflicted on international human rights campaigners and has resulted in at least ten deaths.
Israel continues to impose its illegal blockade on Gaza, both on land and sea, in its policy of collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
The appeasement policies of the Western powers, in the first place the United States and the European Union, must end. They have stood by and allowed the Israel government to act with impunity in murdering thousands of Palestinians and starving a million people in its four-year illegal blockade of Gaza.
• The Irish Government must break off diplomatic relations with Israel and expel the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland.
• The recent invitation to Israeli to join the OECD should be rescinded.
• The Irish Government must ensure that no materials or components manufactured here in Ireland are sold to or allowed to end up in Israel.
• The Government should call for an international boycott—economic, political, military, and cultural—with this aggressive nuclear-armed rogue state.
• The Government should also call on the United Nations to organise an international flotilla of ships, protected by the necessary naval peace-enforcement vessels, to completely break the illegal blockade and lift the siege of Gaza.
It is time to lift the silence, break the blockade, and end the policy of appeasement of this dangerous rogue state.
