Senior ministers concerned about effects of Occupied Territories Bill.

There are many countries with conflicts/starving kids/boys etc and yet it's taken gaza to drag people out whinging and our incompetent goverpassing useless sanctimonious look-at-us bills. Why I wonder.

I don't agree with people being bombed but I don't agree with terrorists killing innocents either so I support Israel in defending themselves.

BBut I take great umbrage with that iron taoiseach and his cabinet worrying their empty heads about other countries when they're driving ours down the drain.

It is. There’s a war on there and Israel is dealing with enemies that continually attack it, just as the Allies in 44 and 45 defended themselves from the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese by utterly destroying their ability to attack the Allied nations. Doing so didn’t make the Allies the “bad guys” and the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese the “good guys”…

Virtue signalling to who exactly? Every single party in the Dáil (to the best of my knowledge) supports the passing of the bill. The entire parliament consisting of 174 government and opposition TDs are 'virtue signallers'?

I have repeatedly stated Israel committed war crimes

But you see the left doesn’t care about 4x black people being genocided by Arab Islamists in same timeframe in Sudan

You wouldn’t even denounce them while demanding denouncing of Israel

Yourself and Palestinian brigade better take a good look at yourselves as to why you are so upset about Palestine but deliberately avoiding mentions of much worse genocide by Islamists

Is it anti semitism? Pro Islamism? Plain racism based on skin colour? Indifference?

Cowardly? Maybe tell us what risk you personally are putting yourself at by posting anonymously on a discussion forum?

This sort of pointless moral grandstanding makes it hard to take your opinions seriously. If you think it’s cowardly to express one opinion on this site, then expressing an opposing one is being brave. Which is laughable.

It's too simplistic an explanation. If there was genuine disquiet and discomfort around the bill, there's no way you'd have the entire parliament on board. Israel as a foreign policy issue appears to have unified the left, the centre and the right in Irish politics. Trying to put the whole thing down to 'virtue signalling' and peer pressure is surely inaccurate - the prolonged violent attack on Gaza / Palestine (not to mention several other countries) by an out of control far right Israeli government was probably always going to produce this response, given the historical sympathy for Palestinians.

Israel as a foreign policy issue appears to have unified the left, the centre and the right in Irish politics.

You mean like abortion did for decades? No peer pressure or virtue signalling there? 🤨

Trying to put the whole thing down to 'virtue signalling' and peer pressure is …

…the most logical explanation. It’s not as though it hasn’t happened repeatedly in Irish political life.

And that perceived unity of opinion is exactly how peer pressure and virtue signalling work.

It's totally understandable that there would have been much less appetite across the spectrum for passing the bill between 2018 and October 2023. But the events of the last 16 months have been so horrific that the political mood has clearly changed dramatically.

I'm bemused to hear people worried about what the US response might be. Trump has spent the last week threatening numerous friends and allies such as Canada, Mexico, Denmark, the EU and NATO members with trade wars and tariffs and even with invasion. The idea that something like the OTB will concern him hardly holds up (he probably couldn't give a flying fig whether we pass it or not).

I think the political mood in the last few weeks has changed back. Israel withdrawing its Ambassador has had an effect. Nobody in politics believed they would resort to that. They did, and with Trump backing Israel, and a loose cannon, I suspect the OTB will be long-fingered again. There are so many potential legal issues that it can be repeatedly sent back for redrafting. I don't see the particular group of independents that will support the government making a big deal about it either.

Any politician who stands up to the wrong-headed public mob and says that this OTB is bad for Ireland is hardly cowardly.

It’s the very worst form of Student Union politics - a bunch of pretentious frauds who prefer to make grandiose statements on issues over which they have no power whatsoever rather than bother with the boring grind of actually working to resolve their constituents’ problems.

That's your opinion and you are entitled to it. However I see it as a great and correct decision and the fact that it irks so many genocide supporters makes it even better.

I didn't notice your hero, Eamon Ryan, saying anything against it.

Last I checked, there were 0 employees of American MNCs in the Vatican. Perhaps you know as a few.

As always, it is those who have no stake in something that make the loudest noise.

Ah so it's for personal reasons that you don't want a genocide and war crimes called out. I see. Lives mean nothing as long as you are collecting your shilling.