Richard Boyd Barrett: Israel's killings must not be normalised
Richard Boyd Barrett directly challenges the Minister, condemning Israeli actions against Palestinian children and urging a boycott of football ties with Israel. He recounts the killing of young athletes, including Mohammed Khalifa, and argues that sporting events cannot normalise a regime that targets children.
Main accusation
Richard Boyd Barrett accuses the Israeli state of treating Palestinian children as targets and describes those actions as 'ugly, murderous and genocidal.' He frames the killing of young people who play sport as part of a decades-long campaign and rejects any normalization that would treat those actions as acceptable.
A chilling quote from an Israeli official
Boyd Barrett reads a decade-old statement by a Knesset MP later appointed minister, a remark he says encapsulates the attitude driving violence against Palestinian children. He uses the quote to illustrate what he calls a state-level psychosis toward successive generations.
A personal testimony
He recalls organising football matches that brought young Palestinian players, including Mohammed Khalifa of Al-Halal, to play abroad. He tells Mohammed Khalifa's story - from playing at age 12 to being killed with members of his family years later - as a concrete example of lives extinguished.
Political appeal and consequences
Boyd Barrett closes by urging the Minister to support a boycott and to refuse to 'normalise' Israel through sporting contact. He frames the decision over whether to allow football ties as a moral test, insisting that playing a match should not be used to whitewash or ignore the killing of children.
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I love football, Minister. I've played football since I was age five and one of the things I love about football is it's young people all over the world playing the beautiful game, doing something beautiful. Now what Israel is doing to Palestinian children is the very antithesis of what football is about because it is ugly, it is murderous and it is genocidal and a very very significant part of Israel's long-standing, decades long-standing genocidal campaign against the Palestinians is their desire to murder Palestinian children, including the children who play football. I remember back in 2015 I read out a quote among many from ministers, this is more than a decade ago, but one particularly stuck out by ILS Shackhead who was a Knesset MP who later became Minister for Justice and he was talking about Palestinian children and he said they should go as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes otherwise more snakes will be raised. Now that is the attitude he became a minister after saying that. That is the attitude of the Israeli regime towards Palestinian children that has led them to kill more than 350 children who play football in the last three years, more than a thousand young mostly young people who play sports of various kinds and what one of those children was a young man called Mohammed Khalifa and I was very proud to be part of organizing one leg of soccer events that Mohammed Khalifa from a team called Al-Halal in Gaza, they came and they played in Balibrak as well as playing around the country. He was aged 12 at the time. In 2016, that was 2016, a decade later he was massacred along with seven members of his family and his brother. He had gone on to play for the Palestinian National Youth Team and he was wiped out by an Israeli attack on his which wiped out his entire his entire family and he played hurling and everything while he was here. He met the president. It was such a beautiful thing and then his life is extinguished along with hundreds of other young people playing football by a regime that treats young Palestinians playing football and young children as snakes to be wiped out. That is the psychosis of the Israeli regime and that's why they must not be normalized and the idea of normalizing them by playing a game of football to a state that does that to children is disgusting. You should support the boycott and stop the game Minister.
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