Debate contribution: Exclusion of the Minister of Education from Office

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 10 November 2025.

MLA

Miss Deirdre Hargey

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 5224413

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the proposer of the motion. We in Sinn Féin are glad to support it. I am concerned by the opening and ending to the Minister's statement, because I thought that he was here as the Education Minister to serve all our community, not speaking as a unionist politician. I ask you to reflect on that. Minister, you are here as the Education Minister, and that is about representing all the communities here, be they unionist, nationalist, republican, loyalist, minority ethnic or those from the Palestinian community who are here. You are to represent all the communities that make up our society. The Minister's decision to use his visit to Israel and to use departmental resources to promote a visit in the occupied territories is wrong, and, I believe, political. Last week, the Minister stated in the Chamber that he was formally invited by Israel — a trip that was planned and organised by the Israeli embassy. That was a political visit and an Israeli-paid-for propaganda visit that was planned well before the Minister made his disturbing speech from the Back Benches the week before he went to Israel, thanking and praising the IDF. Remember that over 50,000 Palestinian children have been murdered or injured in Gaza, and almost 500 teachers have been killed at the hands of the IDF. An enforced Israeli-made famine has taken place in Gaza, and the army enforces its Government's policy of starving an entire population. That is the context in which the Minister visited the Ofek School, situated in East Jerusalem, which is in the occupied Palestinian territories. On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a landmark opinion that the occupation of Palestinian territories is against international law. It is unlawful, but still this Minister chose to visit and to promote his visit on his departmental website. The ICJ further stated that Israel's:

"policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory."

Israel's restrictions on Palestinians:

"in the Occupied Palestinian Territory constitutes systemic discrimination".

Where the Minister visited, there is systemic discrimination against the Palestinian people. The court advised states to avoid any action that would maintain the current situation, but you ignored that advice. Indeed, the British Government, along with other Governments, also see this as illegal activity by Israel and have issued advice pertaining to that. Yet this Education Minister thought that he would flout that advice and use the Department of Education's resources in promoting his visit. The Minister stated:

"No departmental resources were used to publicise any political message."

If only that were true. Publicising the message that East Jerusalem is a normal society is political propaganda. It is a message that is consistently given by the Israeli state, a political propaganda message that this Minister chose to parrot and that breaches international law. I once spoke in the Chamber of one of the political speeches that most inspires me, made by Tony Benn, the late British MP, on the Iraq war. He spoke of his lived experience as a child in Britain during the period of a world war and the impact on his community. He spoke of 24 October 1945, when the United Nations Charter was passed, and how that generation was determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war — an era that enacted human rights law and standards. Over recent days, we have also heard the well-known phrase, "lest we forget", as part of remembering those wars. We should all understand and never forget those periods of global history and that we need to learn from the past. Oh, how we have forgotten. International law has been torn up by Israel, or set alight, as in the words of Israel's Defence Minister: "Gaza is burning". That Minister, along with the Israeli Prime Minister, has been issued with an international arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against the Palestinian people. The Education Minister visited a regime that has war crimes warrants out for their arrest, for war crimes against the Palestinian people. Where do these actions leave international law? In recent weeks, a UN rapporteur who oversees the inclusion of women and children has said how the actions of the Israeli Government towards the Palestinian people normalise atrocities globally. What a stark and depressing statement. Indeed, during the Minister's visit to Israel and to the school in the occupied territories, there was another IDF attack on Gaza, which killed six children. I wonder whether the Minister praised the IDF on that visit. In this context, the teaching unions have rightly condemned the Minister's actions. The wider community has condemned them and, as others have reflected, condemnation has come from across the community. At my constituency office, I have been inundated with messages, not just from nationalists and republicans but from right across the community in South Belfast and, indeed, from East Belfast as well. That anger and those sentiments are backed up by international condemnation of Israel's actions, including by international courts, which have made rulings of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

That is the context in which Paul Givan made his visit. More importantly and sickeningly, he boasted about it on the airwaves in the midst of 50,000 children having been murdered and injured; over 500 teachers having been murdered; international law having been broken and ignored; a forced, man-made famine; forced displacement; and, most grotesque of all, a genocide. Anyone who calls this a pantomime needs to take a serious look at themselves. This is not a pantomime; it is about a breach of international law and the genocide being committed by the Israeli state. Those of us here today who support the motion stand with international law and international human rights organisations that have called out the actions of the Israeli state. We stand with teachers and teaching unions and the young people who go to school here; indeed, we stand with the wider community, which, I believe, is also repulsed by the Minister's actions. We do so lest we forget Israel's war crimes against the Palestinian people and the Education Minister's attempts to sanitise them. The community sees that, and we support its call for you to go, Minister.

1,043 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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