Today Israeli forces invaded, in the middle of the night while people were asleep, the Palestinian refugee camp in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, and demolished dozens of their homes and killed and injured dozens of men, women and children, devastating their lives and meagre possessions.

This is clearly a horrendous crime in violation of the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention. I do not need to remind you that these people are in these refugee camps because Israel had driven them out of their homes, in 1948, and refused to allow them to return to their homes, in defiance of UN resolutions and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To compound this crime, Israel continues to occupy illegally, since 1967, the territory that they fled to, and refuses to withdraw from this illegally occupied territory, in defiance of repeated Security Council resolutions.

This crime goes on today and we hear nothing but a deafening silence from our government. Does our government have no role or voice to express our peoples' repugnance at these crimes? Will our government bring pressure to bear on Israel to stop its inhumane treatment of the refugees and comply with international law?