CENTRAL BANK COMMISSION MUST ACT TO END COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE

 Protest at the Central Bank of Ireland, TOMORROW Tuesday 29^th March 12.30pm - 2pm

Press Release, Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Monday 28th April

A protest, organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, will take place outside the meeting of the Central Bank Commission at the Central Bank of Ireland on North Wall Quay, TOMORROW Tuesday 29^th March between 12.30pm and 2pm, to demand that the Central Bank stops regulating Israel Bonds.   

Why? Israel Bonds fund genocide. By acting as the regulator of Israel Bonds the Central Bank of Ireland is acting as the gateway into Europe for these “war bonds”. It is the lynchpin of apartheid Israel’s fundraising machine in the European Union.

Recent research conducted by Netherlands-based financial research group Profundo, found that Israel issued sovereign bonds with a total value of $19.4bn between October 2023 and January 2025. Marketed with the slogan Israel is at War – Stand with Israel, these bonds were underwritten by a small number of investment banks, four in the US, one in the UK and two in Europe - Deutsche Bank (Germany) $2.49 bn and BNP Paribas (France) $2bn. The Central Bank of Ireland by facilitating the sale of Israel Bonds has enabled Israel to raise almost $4.5bn in Europe in the sixteen-month period from October 2023 to January 2025.

IPSC Vice Chairperson Fatin Al Tamimi said: "Genocidal Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza, reducing 80% of it to ruins and wiping out critical infrastructure in a relentless campaign of collective punishment. The scale of our human losses is unprecedented, the most in our history ever, perhaps more than what we lost since the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Palestine. Over a quarter of a million Palestinians have been slaughtered, maimed, wounded, burned alive, buried beneath rubble, disabled, or disappeared into Israeli detention centres. While the two million survivors, remaining in Gaza, endure a living hell, displaced, stripped of dignity, denied water, food, medicine, and electricity, and left to live on restricted aid, all under Israel’s suffocating siege. Death threatens 300,000 children in Gaza due to Israel's slow and deliberate killing, via lack of food and clean water. Already, more than 60,000 children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition. 50 have lost their lives to starvation so far. 

"This is not a tragic humanitarian crisis—it is a deliberate genocide, a calculated erasure of Palestinian life, witnessed by the world in real time. And the horrifying reality is, that part of the funding for these killing machines, missiles, and bombs, are coming from the Israeli war bonds facilitated by the Irish central bank. 

"Our Central Bank of Ireland is the sole regulator in the European Union of Israel Bonds. Since Brexit, the CBI has acted as the gateway into Europe for these bonds and they must take action immediately. They have the power and the responsibility to end regulation of the bonds and if they fail, our government is obliged to make sure that our state and its institutions do not facilitate genocide as Ireland is a signatory to the Genocide Convention."

Ms. Al Tamimi concluded: "Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands wrote that ‘our revenge will be the laughter of our children.’ Today, Palestine’s children weep - our revenge against injustice must be their freedom. We say ENOUGH to complicity and impunity - and we demand that the Central Bank stop funding genocide!"

Also speaking at the protest will be Senator Frances Black, Senator Alice Mary Higgins, Lynn Boylan MEP, Fergal Costello of  Monkstown Vigil Group, Paul McSweeney of Trade Union Friends of Palestine.