Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the United Nations the world has failed the people of Gaza, “but he has also failed Gaza”, a crowd estimated at 10,000 attending a march for Palestine in Dublin on Saturday was told.
Addressing a rally outside Leinster House at the end of the March from Parnell Square, Zoe Lawlor, chairwoman of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, called on the Government to impose sanctions on Israel.
To roars of “shame, shame” from the crowd, with many people waving Palestinian flags, Lawlor said Ireland continued to trade with Israel and send exports to the Israeli weapons industry.
She said the Government “took years to even enact the Occupied Territories Bill, but they refuse to include services”.
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Lawlor said the Government continued to allow the US military to use Shannon Airport and had allowed “the Central Bank fund genocide until we stopped it”.
“So this shame is also on the Irish Government, and no amount of grandstanding at the UN will ever take that away,” she said.
Lawlor also took issue with the Government on the question of issuing visas for Palestinian students to study in Ireland.
According to Department of Justice figures, more than 100 Palestinian student visas were refused earlier this year. The visa approval rate dropped from about 84 per cent in 2025 to 27.5 per cent this year.
“They told the students to send their appeals by post when they know there is no postal system in Gaza,” Lawlor said. “This is one of our Government’s most shameful acts on Palestine.
“We will never forget the record number of students, healthcare workers, children, journalists, medics, UN employees, sports people, and aid workers murdered by Israel.
“We will never forget that they shot children in the head, that they shot people that were starving as they queued for food, that they made thousands of children amputees,” she said.
“There is malnutrition and hunger, disease and rats, and all of these crimes are presided over by the sham board of peace and enabled by the international community, including Ireland.”
Lawlor also criticised the Football Association of Ireland, which she said was “enabled by the Government” to cross a Palestinian picket line and play Israel.
She said the Government “missed a huge opportunity to be on the right side of history, but the broad civil society Stop the Game campaign was a success, with immense support from sports people, from trade unions, from all Opposition parties and the public”.
The rally was also addressed by Palestinian human rights activist Talha Al Ali, who described life in Palestine under an occupying “apartheid state”. He accused Israel of stealing land and ethnically cleansing the West Bank.
He said in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian communities were being violently expelled from their land and homes.
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is supported by more than 160 Irish civil-society groups, many of whom were represented at Saturday’s march and rally, which was called to mark three years since the beginning of “Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza”.
The full march took more than an hour to travel through the city centre. It was the 21st such national mobilisation since October 2023.
