Debate contribution: Gaza: Action to End Forced Starvation

Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on 9 September 2025.

MLA

Ms Emma Sheerin

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

9 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Gaza: Action to End Forced Starvation

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5086622

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh míle maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Some Members who are sitting across the House today appear to be bored by the fact that Sinn Féin is still talking about this matter. We cannot believe that it is still happening. That is why we are still talking about it, and, just to be clear, we will continue to talk about it until it stops. On top of that, we again hear calls for balance. I reiterate this: when babies are starving to death, there is no balance, there is no place for balance and we cannot call for balance. It feels futile to stand here and talk about this. It feels as though nothing has changed since the previous time that we discussed it in the Chamber, but, of course, things have changed. It has got worse. What we have seen over the past 23 months has been mischaracterised by many as a war. It is not a war. It is a one-sided attack by an apartheid state. It is an escalation of a decades-long attempt to completely obliterate an entire population of people. It is a man-made famine, live-streamed on our phones. It is about the first group in history to experience their genocide being broadcast in real time and to still not be believed. We, on these Benches, believe the Palestinian people, and we stand with them. How much more suffering do you need to see before you will believe them and stand up against it? Where is your humanity? I do not profess to be a better Christian than anyone else in the House, but I know right from wrong. This is the current death toll in Gaza: 64,522 people. Of those people, 393 starved to death, and 140 of those were children. We have almost moved past talking about the bombing of hospitals, because there are nearly no hospitals left in the Gaza Strip.

This is upsetting, and I cannot understand how anybody would not be upset by it. I can accept that there are political viewpoints that you might not comprehend but that you have to recognise as being valid if they do no harm, but the racist rhetoric of the Israeli state does harm. It has done immeasurable harm. It has dehumanised an entire race of people, which has allowed the world to facilitate their genocide. People say that the definition of insanity is doing same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I do not know whether, in continuing to present this argument and ask for humility and humanity in response, it is we who are insane or those who blindly follow the coloniser regardless of the outcome, but somebody is wrong. "Nuance" is not a term that I typically associate with unionism in the North of Ireland, but, today, I have yet again heard people attempting to apply nuance to the starving of men, women, children and babies. Let me be really clear: there is no nuance to the forced starvation of babies. There is no context, lecturing or posturing that you can apply to that to make it right. If you are starving a baby, you are the one in the wrong: it is that simple. The context, for those who want to hear it, is this: 77 years of occupation. A people were literally forcibly removed from their homes. They left their houses and watched those same houses being given to someone else. Since that time, they have been detained on a strip of land the size of County Louth. Where they go or what they do is dictated by their identity. They have no freedom of movement, no reliable electricity source and no clean running water. Their schools are provided by charities. That is the reality. The last time that we had this debate in the Chamber, in June 2025, Members on the opposite Benches talked about their tours of Israel and the hospitality that they received. Well, it is well for ye. I tried to go to Palestine in 2014 but the Israelis were bombing them from the sky then too, and we could not get in. Friends of mine — Killian Feehan, who is now an SDLP councillor, and Dáire Hughes, the Sinn Féin MP for Newry and Armagh — have both been previously and told me the stories of what they witnessed there. They described the brutal Israeli occupation that kept people hemmed in. We all know that that did not start on 7 October 2023. There is a duty on us to call this out for what it is and to stand against it. Members have reflected on the fact that the protest outside this Building yesterday called for action. The protestors asked us to bring motions to this Chamber. History will judge us all. If your heart and your conscience are not screaming at you now, and if your moral compass is not telling you right from wrong, think about how you will be reflected in history. Let that guide you. What we are doing here is not much, but it is all that we can do. We will continue to do that until the Palestinian people have peace and justice.

871 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Not flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

The speech's main thrust is humanitarian advocacy on Gaza: death tolls, starvation, the destruction of hospitals and a call for the Assembly to act, which the rubric treats as taking a side on a foreign conflict rather than culture-war activity. It does contain one sarcastic line aimed at a local community, "'Nuance' is not a term that I typically associate with unionism in the North of Ireland", along with "it is well for ye" and "blindly follow the coloniser", which edge towards mapping the conflict onto political divisions here. These are brief asides, though, and do not make up the speech's main function.

Public interest or divisiveness

Most of the contribution deals with the substance of a grave humanitarian issue and urges members to support action, which serves the public interest. The jibe at unionism as a whole, and the questioning of opposite members' humanity and conscience, add an element of communal point-scoring that is more than incidental. Both elements are present, but the humanitarian argument clearly predominates.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:05 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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