The Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs has heard stinging criticism of the Occupied Territories Bill from former minister for justice Alan Shatter, who likened it to legislation passed in Germany in the 1930s.
Mr Shatter described the proposed legislation as the first 'Boycott Jews bill' by a European government since 1945, and replicated the type of legislation initiated by the Nazis.
Committee chair John Lahart of Fianna Fáil said that a claim made during the proceedings that the bill is anti-Semitic was "hugely hurtful and slanderous".
For some weeks the committee has been scrutinising the Bill, known as the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Bill, which prohibits the importation of goods from those settlements.
The committee also heard from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who told TDs and Senators that Palestinian hope was "draining away given the ongoing genocide in Gaza as the world sat on its hands".
The Ireland Palestine Alliance called at the committee for politicians to do everything they could to help, including adopting the Occupied Territories bill.
In the first session, TDs and Senators heard from the Ireland Israel Alliance and several members of the Jewish community in Ireland.
Watch: Alan Shatter says Occupied Territories Bill is a 'sectarian measure'
Chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland Maurice Cohen said whether it was intended or not, the message which flows from the Occupied Territories Bill was anti-Jewish. He added it was "a performance of misguided effort", and that it has "been wrapped in the language of justice, solidarity and resistance".
Mr Shatter went a further step, arguing it had an echo of the legislation drafted by the Nazis in 1930s.
In his opening statement, Mr Shatter said it was "essentially a sectarian measure based on falsehoods, riddled with obscurity and anomalies". He said it was "detached from historical, religious and present day reality" and "abandons all lessons learnt in our own peace process".
Mr Shatter said the bill's central obligation is to prohibit "the importation of goods originating in an Israeli settlement", and that it is now "justified and lauded by some as simply symbolic".
Mr Shatter said the symbolism is to "demonise Israel" and to "portray Ireland as advocating the locations be Judenrein, a policy which reflects that attempted in the last century in Europe by Nazi Germany".
He said that it "starkly resembled the unenforced Father Ted-like provisions applicable to the import of condoms contained in the Health Planning Act 1980".
"It may ultimately prove to be nothing more than fantasy politics and political theatre that does profound damage to the reputation of our State," he said.
Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan recounted his trips to the region where he met "hardened" NGOs and he said that what they have seen in Gaza "is on a different scale", and rejected claims by Mr Shatter that the Bill was a token gesture.
Watch: Brian Brennan rejects criticism by Alan Shatter of Occupied Territories Bill
Mr Shatter said the bill is "fantasy politics" because it is "trying to ban the importation" of a small amount of goods which "is a thing of complete irrelevance".
Sinn Féin's Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said that the Jewish community in Ireland should feel welcome and a part of Irish society.
He told the committee that it is not right to put the responsibility of the actions of Israel's government on individual Jewish people in Israel.
Labour TD Duncan Smith said all the witnesses had failed to recognise that the settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal.
"That's a fundamental point of divergence," he said.
He said that Israel was not the only example of Ireland deploying such a Bill, and that in 2014, an "identical bill was passed in Irish law prohibiting trade in goods and services with Russian-occupied Ukraine".
He asked if the witnesses accept that Israel is not the only example of Ireland deploying such a law.
Mr Shatter said that boycott that Mr Smith referred to was one "agreed to at European Union level".
'Nothing of substance has changed'
Legal Director of UK Lawyers For Israel Charitable Trust Natasha Hausdorff said that there were "many misconceptions that have pervaded discussion of this bill".
She stressed that "nothing of substance has changed since the previous Bill was frozen" following advice from the Attorney-General.
She predicted that the "longstanding US anti-boycott legislation necessarily means the bill would create grave risks for US businesses in Ireland".
She told the committee that the bill will worsen conditions for Israelis and Palestinians. "It is therefore anti-Semitic," she added. However, Mr Lahart said that the claim was hugely hurtful and slanderous.
The Vice Chairperson of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign Fatin Al Tamimi told the committee that her family is from Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
"In the very heart of our city, 800 colonial settlers and hundreds of occupation soldiers hold Hebron hostage," she said. "The settlements and the violence are not unfortunate by-products - they are the point."
Ms Al Tamimi said hopelessness was created by "watching a live-streamed genocide of our people unfold before our eyes, while Western powers, at best, sit on their hands, and at worst, are actively complicit".
She continued: "For me, the last two years have been a living hell of constant worry about my sister and her family trapped in Gaza.
"We are not asking you for special favours - we are asking that Ireland lives up to its legal obligation not to assist war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide."
Aid system in Gaza 'deliberately destroyed'
The Chair of the Ireland Palestine Alliance said it was clear that direction from the International Court of Justice was being ignored by Israel in its ongoing occupation from Palestinian lands.
Éamon Meehan told the committee that the aid system in Gaza has been "deliberately destroyed".
"The UN and international NGOs had 400 individual locations throughout the Gaza Strip where aid is distributed locally," he said.
"That entire system has been completely and utterly destroyed."
"What Israel has done is an absolute abomination," he added.
Dr John Reynolds, of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said there is a "two-tier system of law" for Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
"The settlements are the core part of why an apartheid regime exists," he told the committee.
"To address the apartheid regime, you have to address the settlements and vice versa."
He said the bill is "absolutely not" pointless, recalling that he was told the same thing about banning South African goods coming into Ireland under apartheid.
"Ireland is leading on this," Dr Reynolds said, pointing to similar legislation in progress in other countries.
There be will "a wave", and "the impact will snowball", should Ireland pass the bill, he added.
