Debate contribution: Exclusion of the Minister of Education from Office
Debate contribution by Mr Declan Kearney on .
- MLA
- Mr Declan Kearney
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 10 November 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Exclusion of the Minister of Education from Office
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5224166
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The participation of the Education Minister in his Israeli state-sponsored propaganda stunt was an obscene act, one that has caused deep offence. It has also been roundly condemned by teachers, unions, students and all right-thinking people across these islands. Minister Givan knew exactly what he was doing. His participation was premeditated. He knew that the use of his departmental social media would provoke widespread outrage. That, too, was premeditated. In doing this, he chose to ignore Israel's sadistic depravity and genocide against the Palestinian people. If there was ever the slightest doubt before, there is no doubting now that he is a genocide denier — an amoral, inhuman, incredible and grotesque position for anyone to adopt, but especially someone in public office. The Minister chooses to ignore the slaughter of over 20,000 innocent Palestinian children in Gaza, 1,000 of them under the age of 12 months. One child has been murdered every hour for the past two years, and 21,000 children have been left with permanent life-changing injuries. Limbs have been amputated without anaesthetic; hundreds have been starved to death by Israel's siege of Gaza; and Gaza is a graveyard for children, as described by UNICEF. The Minister has form in using these institutions to rake up the past of our political conflict and to consciously provoke and demonise. By acting as a prop for that propaganda stunt, you have aligned yourself with a rogue terrorist state — a state whose murderous bloodbath in Gaza has made it a pariah in the global community; whose leader is the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ); whose genocidal war has violated every canon of international law, such as the genocide convention, the Rome statute, the Geneva Convention and the United Nations charter; and whose famine, genocide, torture, siege and carpet bombing of Gaza have been denounced by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Today, the state of Israel stands charged with and condemned for crimes against humanity. Your Israeli-sponsored trip and attempt to sanitise your complicity with a social media post on the Department of Education web page is an affront to the Assembly and to our power-sharing institutions. You do not own the Department of Education. It is the property of our peace settlement and the Good Friday Agreement. The arrogance that you have shown in defence of your actions since your return confirms your premeditation. There has been not one ounce of humility, compassion or regret for the people of Gaza or the anger that you have provoked. It is clear that you intended to cause rancour and division. Your actions are inevitably tied up with your personal political ambitions and your party's electoral pressures within political unionism, but, be that as it may, what you did was absolutely wrong. Denying genocide and defying international law are absolutely reprehensible. You have chosen to associate yourself with the perpetrators of a modern holocaust and then to revel in that decision. You should be ashamed. You can no longer command —
— confidence as a Minister of Education —
— and you should go.
Yes.
536 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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