Michael McDowell
National University of Ireland · Independent · Ireland
“Then I think of this particular Chamber where people are polite and kind to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There is no baying or shouting down or whatever. It is a great tribute to the Seanad staff that that spirit continues to exist in this House.”
“I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee.”
“I am one of the people who disagrees with the substance of that report. We have to have a real solid debate on it here in this House, not merely a cursory one. It is an issue of fundamental importance. It cannot be avoided, one way or the other. Whatever your views are on it, it needs to be thrashed out.”
“Although coming up to the end of this term we are rushing things through, and the guillotine is well-oiled and slicing this way and that, we have a lot of work to do in the autumn.”
“The people who did that were brought before the International Court of Justice and condemned and imprisoned. If Ireland does not clearly state that there are to be consequences for people who do things like what Mladić, Milošević and Karadžić were brought to account for, if we are incapable as a State of publicly saying that what Secretar…”
“If we cannot, as a State, say publicly to Rubio, "Hands off the International Criminal Court", when they were quite happy when the people who did the 7,000 murders in Srebrenica got their just desserts, but when there is any suggestion that what has happened in Gaza, with 70,000 innocent people killed by aerial bombardment and land bombar…”
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“Some of the amendments we are making today are sensible but the Act by itself, as amended, is fundamentally an obstruction to development in this country not an enabler. It sets out to put in place a system of planning law in Ireland, which will obstruct planning and development for many years even though it purports to limit the capacity of individuals and unincorporated associations to avail of judicial review. It will in fact enshrine the system of planning law, which at the moment has reached crisis point where we do not have the infrastructure in terms of water or electricity to carry out relevant development to deal with the housing crisis.”
“Scarcely a year later, here we are amending this Act, which was so urgent that it had to be guillotined through the House at the time without proper debate. I want to make a general observation. I believe the passage of this Act and the enshrinement in Irish law of a whole series of things, including the position of An Bord Pleanála, retitled An Coimisiún Pleanála, and processes involving national development objectives set out as criteria by which local authorities are bound, ministerial directives and the infamous Office of the Planning Regulator - which in its time has operated to dezone land zoned for building domestic houses at a time of housing shortage - all of that is now being made a permanent part of our law.”
“When the Bill came to this House, we were told it was a matter of absolute urgency that it would be enacted before the last general election. The Bill was guillotined in this House with hundreds of amendments, including Government amendments, never being reached or discussed. The Bill then went back to the Dáil and a guillotined motion said that all Government amendments were approved, even those that were never considered or discussed. The Bill got a fairly light consideration in the Dáil of less than a day because, again, it was urgent that it would be passed before the general election was called. This document, which is now the cornerstone of all planning and development law in Ireland was enacted without being properly scrutinised. I will say what I have to say on some provisions of the law that we are changing now.”
“Normally, I would not comment on a section of this kind but I want to draw the attention of the House to what we are doing. We are proposing to amend the Planning and Development Act 2024. I have a copy of it here. The Act will be twice as long when it is translated into Irish. We are waiting for that process to take place. I want to put on the record of the House that the Bill was guillotined with the great majority of amendments not even reached or considered. The Bill came from the Dáil to this House in such an altered state that a special version of it had to be prepared to enable Senators to understand what had actually emerged from the Dáil and to show how it was different from the Bill that started off in the Dáil.”
“I stand by the reasonable view taken by the ICCL that there should be, in certain circumstances, the right for the Judiciary to order a jury trial where it is in the interests of justice that this should be done and in the interests of the Judiciary that it should be done. You can have all the arguments you like about the amount of damages that should arise from a jury trial in such circumstances, but it is a mistake to abolish it in its entirety.”
“As a technical point on the live broadcast defence, there is no actual definition of “live”, but in some cases broadcasters have a delay and I would want to be sure that delay mechanism does not deprive something of the status of a live broadcast. I also strongly support the right of people to pursue anonymous posters on social media. It is cowardly. I believe fundamentally in free speech, but if you are going to speak freely and publish it you should be willing to stand over what you say. There has been a coarsening in society and a willingness to damage other people and defame them because of the difficulty of obtaining Norwich Pharmacal orders and of persuading social media service providers to identify the people whose views they are relaying. With those few words, I welcome most of the Bill.”
“Plaintiffs should be obligated to go to court and establish that this is a serious imputation on their character, regardless of whether they are corporate. Small things like a store detective asking you whether you paid for something are not serious, unless there are some extraordinary circumstances. The idea that a person can go to court and claim damages and a shopkeeper, business owner, hotelier or whoever has to defend it and incur the costs involved is wrong. The Minister should accept that the serious harm clause applies not simply to companies, as this Bill proposes, but to everybody. Nobody goes to court unless they establish serious consequences arising out of the alleged defamation.”
“Its genesis was to deal with the Albert Reynolds decision of the High Court in London about fair and reasonable publication. I said in the course of the debate on that Bill that I did not claim to be infallible, though Senator David Norris queried whether I was or was not. The Minister is right to simplify that section. It is too much of a maze at this stage. It is too difficult to implement and not serving a useful purpose. The serious harm test should apply to all defamation in the Circuit Court and High Court. This business of the wrong photograph being used in a newspaper, the wrong name being given or whatever and therefore somebody feels they are entitled to a minor judicial aware of damages should not be the norm.”
“I support the ICCL position, which is that it be the norm that it goes to a judge alone, but let us always preserve the right, especially for the Judiciary, to say this case is so controversial it would be better if 12 people sworn made the decision rather than one individual who is going to have to disbelieve one person and believe another and give reasons they did so. That is an important point. I am not against the notion that there should be judge-only determination, as in the Circuit Court, but I am against the idea that there is no circumstance in which the Judiciary and the public interest would not be served by a jury trial and that is why I support the ICCL’s position on this matter. On section 26, that particular provision was brought in by the Bill I brought before this House in December 2006, which is 19 years ago. Time flies.”
“I believe strongly juries are the best way to determine those kinds of matters because again, unlike cases where juries give a verdict, if you get to a Garda assault case you are going to have to say the plaintiff was lying about what happened or gardaí were lying about what happened, and there will be consequences for individual gardaí. By contrast, if a jury hands down a verdict of X against the State it does not point the finger at an individual witness but simply says that person was assaulted, or whatever it may be. The consequences of having reasoned judicial determinations will have to be worked out very carefully.”
“I agree with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, which suggested that a compromise was available on this, which is to say that cases would be determined in the High Court by a judge alone unless a party convinced the court that it would be more appropriate for a jury to deal with it. We do not allow judges alone to determine serious cases of, for example, Garda assaults on individuals, or indeed assaults generally between individuals, because there is a view, which I subscribe to, that judges tend to become case-weary and in many cases judges tend to take the view that, for example, gardaí or State agencies are to be upheld against unlikely looking individual plaintiffs. I prefer a jury to decide whether gardaí used excessive force, assaulted somebody or are telling the truth about the circumstances.”
“So-and-so gave evidence, they disbelieved them. Judges will have to say that in certain kinds of cases. They might have to say that they came to the conclusion that a particular person was lying to them. That happens quite frequently in ordinary litigation. When it comes to defamation, particularly serious defamation, we are not getting rid of the High Court's jurisdiction to deal with defamation, but the Circuit Court, as the Minister said, is entitled to deal with defamation where the claim for damages is limited. What we are dealing with here is serious defamation and the Minister is now putting into law the proposition that these matters will always be and can only be decided by a judge sitting alone. I do not think that is going to turn out to be a happy change in our law.”
“Those people in the media who want to get rid of all juries in all defamation actions may find that, in five or ten years' time, they will say that Judge McDowell - though I am over the age, so it is not going to happen - has for the third time held against RTÉ, The Irish Times or whatever, that he has for the fourth time disbelieved particular kinds of witnesses, and that it is the fifth time he has come to a controversial view and disbelieved a political figure. They will ask who appointed him in the first place. All of those questions will be asked. The funny thing about juries is that nobody, or very few people, really asks who those people are and why they came to that view. The fact is that juries' verdicts are generally accepted but judges' verdicts are going to have to be reasoned. They will have to say when Mr. or Mrs.”
“I welcome the Minister and thank him for his attendance. There are many features of this Bill with which I am in complete agreement and there are others on which I am mainly in agreement, subject to some criticisms I might have to make. One of the principal functions of this legislation, as introduced by the then Minister, Deputy McEntee, was the abolition of juries in the High Court. That is a matter that is strongly supported by the media on the basis that defamation trials in the High Court are apparently very complex and the allegation is made that juries are unpredictable and sometimes overly generous when they award compensation. Those are legitimate points to make but I have one thing to say in respect of juries.”
“It does not require a huge debate to put on the record our absolute revulsion at what is going on and what is now planned, and to make it clear to the American ambassador, in particular, that the complicity of Donald Trump in this plan to create a new Riviera on the Gaza Strip is utterly unacceptable to this House and most Irish people who are decent. We can do it. It will only take five minutes because I do not believe there will be any opposition to it in this House before we rise. It is shocking to me that right across Europe there is a deafening silence at this further war crime, which is redolent of things that happened 70 and 80 years ago in central Europe, and Israelis should be aware that this is happening again in our time.”
“That is a technique the British started in Ireland during the War of Independence, and their forces brought it to Palestine as a reprisal measure. It survived into the Israeli period of armed confrontation. Today I note The Guardian newspaper has stated that 32 sq. km on the fringes of the occupied territories, which are Palestinian lands with, I understand, about 12 villages on them, are to be cleared to make way for an Israeli firing range. When do we get together in this House to say this must stop? Surely this House, the Whips and group leaders can get together.”
“I want to raise with the Leader of the House the possibility of having, before the House rises for the summer vacation, the opportunity to collectively consider a resolution on the situation in Gaza. Today, it is reported that Israel Katz, the defence minister for Israel, has announced a plan that the IDF is working on to remove all of the 2 million people from Gaza to a compound which it proposes to create in the ruins of Rafah. It will call it a humanitarian city, from which nobody will be allowed to exit except to go to an Arab country. That is a war crime and it is scandalous. It is not an isolated Gaza situation. On the West Bank, some 40,000 people have been expelled from places like Tulkarm and Jenin, long established urban refugee camps. Some 6,000 people have had their houses demolished by explosions in reprisals.”
“I thank the Minister. I note what she says about the apparent concentration of some surgical procedures in Blackrock. I ask her, the Department and the HSE to ask why that is happening and whether there is a differential between patients who have insurance and patients who do not in being seen in that context.”
“The Bill is designed to focus attention on this problem and ensure the HSE realises it must address it clearly and unequivocally, set out plans, report on its progress and account for its successes or failures in delivering what are vital medical services, including surgery in some cases, for people whose lives will be blighted by delay and underperformance. I am glad the House has accepted the Bill. It is now open to, and up to, the Members of Dáil Éireann to bring it into law by having it enacted as a measure approved by both Houses.”
“Its purpose is to ensure the missed targets and unrealised ambitions are addressed and that the political commitments that were given, doubtless in good faith, but were not realised are realised through a process of accountability and positive duty imposed on the HSE. I thank Senators for their support for this measure. I thank the Minister and her Department for accepting the Bill and accepting that accountability and measurable progress are something that, if they are put in place in statute, will result in delivery, explanation as to how delivery will take place and accountability for when delivery does not take place. The beginnings of this issue, which predate the Minister's tenure, were when there was a controversy as to whether funds specially allocated for scoliosis ended up being dissipated elsewhere in the HSE's activities.”
“I am very mindful of not putting individuals' cases on the record of the House in a way that would identify them, especially when they are underage. I have been contacted by parents who are very frustrated at being left in the dark and uncertain as to their child's situation or at being given the impression their child is about to receive badly needed surgery only to be then told it is not available or will not be delivered. It is very difficult for parents, who are the guardians and protectors of their children's rights, to feel confidence in a system where all the moving parts seem to offer hope only for hope to then recede. This Bill will go to Dáil Éireann and I hope its Members pass it into law in due course, with whatever amendments they consider necessary.”
“It has been suggested to me, for instance, that only two children have been offered, and have accessed, surgery in Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in recent times and only 14 have travelled to the USA. I am told, and I would like the Minister's response on this, that some CHI at Crumlin consultants are in a position to operate on patients with these conditions at Blackrock Clinic but that this is not a national pathway, with children and consultants at Temple Street not having the same facilities. Will the Minister indicate to the House how the National Treatment Purchase Fund operates in respect of the CHI outsourcing treatment for scoliosis patients since 2017, whether that oversight still exists and who is responsible for it?”
“She said an information hub had been launched, a tendering process for educational videos is under way, the waiting list and activities report will be published on Friday, 11 July alongside a progress update from the spinal surgery management unit, that frequently asked questions and service updates about the HIQA report have been published, that the spinal surgery management unit will be presenting at the Irish General Practice Nurses Educational Association conference in September, and that CHI is working with the HSE to improve the healthlink pathway for GP referrals to be made more user-friendly. Those are the plans and they are admirable but I also want to raise with the Minister one point that was discussed at the health committee today, which was insourcing and outsourcing of medical services.”
“It was advised that patients are listed by need as opposed to diagnosis and there was a discussion about the differences between non-complex cases and complex cases, and the care paths, intervention paths and treatment paths required for each condition. Ms Lynam provided an update on scoliosis information.”
“I noticed that today, at the health committee, the chief executive of the Health Service Executive, Bernard Gloster, was asked by my colleague, Senator Clonan, whether he had confidence that the Government's targets for spinal surgery, including spina bifida and scoliosis, would be achieved. He said he had confidence that the new chief executive of Children's Health Ireland, Lucy Nugent, would take this seriously and that that agency would deliver what its commitments amount to. For the information of this House, there was a request at that committee for the number of patients on waiting lists with spina bifida.”
“The purpose of this legislation is to put in place, in respect of this particular condition, which requires surgical intervention in many but not all cases, a programme and statutory duty for the Health Service Executive to ensure that it resources the process adequately, that it concentrates the resources which are necessary, and that it puts together a system which gives accountability and progress reports. As somebody said, while I am not in favour of artificial measurement processes, something where progress is not measured and reported on and where there is no accountability tends to slip down the order of priority in any political or administrative process.”
“I understand it is customary to allow a few words to be spoken on the decision that this House has unanimously taken to pass this legislation. I welcome the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, and thank her for her interest and co-operation in the whole process. As I indicated on the first day when this Bill was tendered for Second Stage consideration by the House, I am not here to score political points. The cross-party, united approach of this House is to see that work is done and that the commitments, which were doubtless given in good faith but which are difficult to render as concrete reality, are delivered from now on.”
“He goes on to say Netanyahu is the greatest warrior in Israeli history, that the trial against him for corruption should be discontinued, and that the United States should make sure it is discontinued. I do not know too much about the trial for corruption except that I believe it would not have commenced if there was no basis for it. There are pending war crime charges against Benjamin Netanyahu at the International Court of Justice. I want us all to understand that while what has happened over the past fortnight with Iran has been proceeding, the absolutely indescribable series of continuing war crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank have continued unabated and uncriticised by the United States. In fact, the President of the United States is actively encouraging their continuation.”
“The Irish Government has to ensure that the EU, which made a milk and watery statement about what is happening to the Palestinian people, to be honest, mans up, or something else as we cannot use that phrase anymore - stands up - for decency. Although you might think that some people might share the horror of what is going on, President Trump said on Truth Social said, "I was shocked to hear that the State of Israel, which has just had one of its Greatest Moments in History, and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous Witch Hunt against their Great War time Prime Minister! Bibi and I just went through HELL together.". Does President Trump know what hell is, sitting in his war room, as he calls it, with his MAGA cap on him while people are being pulverised in Gaza?”
“I agree completely with what Senator Fitzpatrick said about what is happening in Gaza. In the past 24 hours, the Palestinian town of Kafr Malik in the West Bank was attacked by illegal Israeli settlers, who burned property. The Israeli army intervened, arrested five of the settlers and killed three Palestinians who were defending their own property. In the past fortnight, while the Iran crisis was brewing, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. They were people simply seeking food supplies, which are being choked off and channelled through centres where those who come seeking food get gunned down. This cannot continue.”
“That is what happened, and I am demanding that there be accountability. I am saying to this House that we cannot tolerate untruths being told to an Irish District Court judge and we certainly cannot allow a situation where the judicial process is deployed on a false basis to deprive people of their liberty and to conceal from members of the Judiciary the true facts when they are determining whether someone should be granted bail.”
“I asked last week for the Minister for justice to come in and debate the circumstances in which entrapment was used. We are extending, under this legislation, powers under the Offences Against the State Act which end up with situations such as I have described. It is absolutely of the greatest importance that there should be an immediate investigation and full accountability, from the Commissioner down, as to how sworn evidence would be given to a judge of the Irish District Court which was misleading and left him in the dark, and not alone left him in the dark but left the accused in the dark to the point where they were prohibited from communicating with each other for a whole year. In that dark despairing year, Evan Fitzgerald decided to take his own life by shooting himself with a neighbour's shotgun.”
“It is a shocking thing, I have to say, that untrue and misleading evidence would be given to a judge of the Irish District Court in these circumstances, leaving him in the dark that these were decommissioned weapons supplied in a controlled delivery by members of An Garda Síochána in a setup of one naive man and his two childhood friends. I believe that is a shocking thing which needs investigation. It raises the fundamental question of entrapment. I am not against entrapment if it is the only way to prove that a big drug dealer is bringing in massive quantities of drugs. I am not against entrapment and that controlled deliveries would take place if a terrorist organisation is importing arms, but these young men, who the judge, just looking at them, said were young and naive, were entrapped in these circumstances.”
“At this stage I wouldn't want to", and the judge said, "Compromise the trial", and he said, "That is an ongoing investigation on the dark web." I just want you to think about that, that a judge was considering whether bail should be given to these accused, three young men who he said appeared to him to be young and naive, and the gardaí had informed the court that they had wanted the weapons to shoot them in the woods, but the gardaí wanted to deprive them of bail, which meant being imprisoned pending trial, due to what they said was the seriousness of the charge.”
“When eventually bail on certain conditions was granted, the District Court judge, Desmond Zaidan, who had been told on sworn evidence that the allegation was that these individuals purchased these firearms on the dark net but that these individuals were not involved in organised crime - those words were spoken to him - very naturally later asked, "When you say the dark web, do you have any idea who was selling them on the dark web?" A member of An Garda Síochána, in sworn evidence, told him, "That is an ongoing investigation.”
“Fitzgerald came with two childhood friends, with whom he often went camping in the woods and who had been his best friends all his life, and they took delivery of the firearms in the car of one of his friends. The car proceeded some distance away to another place, where it was intercepted members of An Garda Síochána, who smashed the windows, dragged out the occupants and made an arrest. The weapons in question had been disabled, were not capable of discharge and were taken from the Garda's own reservoir of seized firearms. When the matter came before the District Court, the Garda initially opposed bail.”
“I raised here last week the unfortunate death of Evan Fitzgerald, who took his own life in Carlow Shopping Centre, having been charged a year earlier with possession of firearms and having been remanded on bail by the District Court in Naas. I just want to put on the record that this was a case of entrapment. Apparently Mr. Fitzgerald sought firearms on the dark web, the protonmail aspect of the dark web. Apparently Interpol or some other international agency alerted the Garda to this inquiry. The response of the Garda was to arrange to meet Mr. Fitzgerald and to conclude a deal with him in which gardaí persuaded him to take an automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol for a price of €2,700. They then arranged to meet him for delivery of these firearms for a price of €2,700. Mr.”
“I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, here today and indicate that I, in general, support the two motions which are being brought before the House today. The Offences Against the State Act is a far-reaching Act and the powers conferred by it on An Garda Síochána are far-reaching, including detention and the routing of cases investigated under it to the Special Criminal Court unless there is an intervention to send them to the ordinary courts, as the Minister of State outlined. I think, however, we should be very conscious in this House of the nature of the powers we are conferring on An Garda Síochána and the seriousness of any abuse of those powers.”
“One of them apparently chose to end his own life, rather than continue with the criminal process. I am also concerned that, according to the Garda Commissioner yesterday, Fiosrú, the watchdog of An Garda Síochána, has apparently indicated no concern in relation to these events. I ask the Leader to arrange for a debate in this House on the practice and ethics of entrapment and the need for An Garda Síochána to be frank and honest with the courts in relation to its conduct of such prosecutions. I ask that the Minister for justice come here for such a debate and explain how it is that these events took place.”
“Strangely, it appears that the court was also informed that the Garda was still investigating who sold the firearms to the defendants. It now appears that Evan Fitzgerald, who is described as a "vulnerable young man", was the central figure in an incident at a Carlow shopping centre this year, in which he publicly took his own life in the course of a major incident there. I am deeply concerned that all of these events could have been avoided if diversion, rather than entrapment and prosecution, had been deployed by An Garda Síochána. I am also concerned that by informing the court in question that gardaí were still investigating by whom the weapons were sold, the court was actively misled. The entrapment and prosecution of three young men for firearms offences involved the gravest of consequences for their lives and their careers.”
“It further appears that a controlled delivery took place using weapons already owned or seized by An Garda Síochána. Following the controlled delivery, other members of An Garda Síochána intercepted the car in which the three young men were travelling and arrested them under the Offences Against the State Act. The court was subsequently told that all three men admitted possession of the firearms in question. The court was told that there was no suspected connection with organised crime or terrorism and that the guns were intended for target shooting in the woods. The court was also told that the three young men were childhood friends and that one of them, the late Evan Fitzgerald, had a fascination with firearms.”
“I raise the important matter brought to public attention by Deputy Allan Kelly at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration yesterday. As court proceedings are still in train in respect of some aspects of the matters raised, I have to be careful in what I say and I will be. However, it appears that three persons, described by the court as "young and naive", were charged with possession of three firearms and ammunition on 2 March 2024 in County Kildare. It further appears that an attempt had been made to purchase firearms on the dark web. It now appears that members of An Garda Síochána met at least one of the three persons charged without revealing their identity and had made arrangements for the firearms and ammunition in question to be delivered to the three young men.”
“When people talk about the rights and wrongs of what is going on, one cannot kill more than 50,000 people, one cannot kill women and children in pursuit of a dwindling number of hostages whose chances of survival are dwindling with the extent of the savagery of what is going on, one cannot justify any of this, and this will not be forgiven. Senator Kelleher mentioned the definition of antisemitism, a definition with which I totally agree, but those who are defending, justifying or equivocating what is happening in Gaza are the agents of international antisemitism; none of us are.”
“If he had any moral authority or difference in ultimate aim from his son-in-law's plan or from Smotrich or Netanyahu, he could have made it very clear that all of this had to stop, but he is a paper tiger when it comes to this. He is operating on a very different wavelength. What has happened in Gaza is indefensible. What happened on 7 October 2023 was completely barbarous, but we must live with the truth that one atrocity should not beget another. The two million people in Gaza who are being bombed and whose homes are being destroyed are innocent people. They are the victims of circumstance. They are the people whose affairs were run by Hamas with the active encouragement of the Israeli Government because Hamas was an asset and the Palestinian Authority was a burden.”
“Ireland has consistently backed Resolution 242 of the United Nations to the effect that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself within its internationally recognised boundaries. We have never queried that and those of us who supported Senator Black's Bill have never argued that was not the case. None of us have ever argued that was not the case. We are now in the position that, unfortunately, the stars are aligned such that we have President Trump in Washington DC and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his envoy to the Arab nations, was the first person to articulate the idea that everybody could be cleared out and the land given to Israel to establish it as a piece of real estate. He has armed Israel. He has sent weapons to Israel.”
“In November 2023, immediately after the incursion and the atrocity in October, Smotrich said, "There are 2 million Nazis in [the West Bank] who hate Jews exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza." Just think about that. That is what the Israeli finance minister, the man who is expanding their settlements today by 22, illegally and contrary to international law, is saying. In May of this year he said, "Gaza will be totally destroyed," and, concerning the Palestinians, "They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places." Those words are just fresh out of his mouth. That is what we are dealing with. That is genocide. It is contrary to every principle of international law.”
“It is saying, in effect, that the atrocity that is now going in the West Bank and in Gaza is justified by virtue of the activities of Hamas, which, when it suited the Israeli Government, it propagated and described as an asset. Smotrich has said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." Where did these people come from? They came from the circumstances in which Israel was founded. They were isolated in three areas: Gaza, the occupied West Bank and in southern Lebanon in refugee camps. That is where they came from. They did not flood in from Saudi Arabia or Jordan or anywhere else. They were people who lived in Palestine until the violence of that period. I am not going to look back now and say who was right and who was wrong in 1948, but to say that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people is deeply offensive.”
“To this day, I wonder what madness infused the minds of the people who organised the atrocities that were committed that day, but it was the Israeli Government which arranged that the Qatari Government would finance Hamas. It was the Israeli Government which was happy that Hamas should be there and the PLO administration, the Palestinian Authority, should be reduced to impotence. If it is a democracy, it has elected and re-elected governments to pursue that policy. There is such a thing as collective responsibility. I recognise that there are many good Jewish and Israeli people who completely abhor what is going on in Gaza. I recognise that. If it is to be regarded and held up as a democratic state, let us remember what it is doing and what its elected Government is doing, which is shocking. By any standard, it is completely shocking.”
“When one looks at Hamas and condemns it - as I absolutely do, and I condemn the atrocity it unleased on 7 October 2023 - we must remember that it was nurtured by people like Smotrich who wanted it there to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution. He bears the moral blame, and so does Netanyahu, for putting 2.2 million people under the control of a terrorist organisation which was by no means democratic and putting them into a pressure cooker where that group was enabled to unleash the atrocity of 7 October. It must be put on record that the Israeli Government which is there now backed Hamas because it suited it to do so. It did not expect what happened on 7 October 2023.”
“In 2015, he gave an interview where he said, "The Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is an asset." He stated that, while the Palestinian Authority was harming Israel in international forums, Hamas's status as a terrorist organisation meant that no one would recognise it, no one would give it status at the International Criminal Court and no one would put forth a resolution at the UN Security Council. It was a cardinal principle of the right wing in Israel that it should support Hamas to weaken the arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, which was trying to edge Palestinian opinion towards a two-state solution and trying to secure international support for that.”