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Press TV has conducted an interview with Anna O’Leary, political commentator, Ireland, about Amnesty International saying the Israeli siege of Gaza for many years is collective punishment of all Gazans. Amnesty International has called on Israel to immediately lift its siege on Gaza. 

- We wanted to get your assessment on the situation in Gaza. What exactly is the Israeli game plan here?

- The situation in Gaza is once again very disturbing. For those of us who respect justice and humanity we have a long catalog of disrespecting the people of Gaza, punishing them collectively. It’s been going on for 65 years with an end game of genocide.

And the world must act. The world is standing by and doing nothing.

Here we are with no fuel. The sewerage is on the streets of Gaza because the power plants are out. It is such a big humanitarian crisis and we the people of the world must push America, must push Israel. These are the two parties that are behind it.

America contributes 11 million dollars per day - not per week or month... per day. 11 million dollars of American tax payer money funds this genocide that is going on in Gaza.

Amnesty has spoken out now. Amnesty has spoken out any times and nobody does anything.

The children are dying. The people are dying and we are witnessing a 21st century [cleansing] and if we do nothing about it we are party to it.

- How much responsibility do you think Egypt has in this situation as well considering it has shut down many of those tunnels and is pretty much controlling the Rafah Crossing quite severely?

- Egypt is obviously like other Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia for example and has started working with Israel. This is against everything - what is going on - killing the Arab children killing the Palestinian people.

And I being Irish I see the Palestinian as my blood brother, my blood sister. They fight for their freedom and for their basic human rights is akin to what we went through under the British. So, we must be especially vocal against this.

Egypt is in turmoil and Egypt is... It is anarchy in Egypt right now and we can’t just blame Egypt.

This has been a long term policy by Israel to rid Palestine of its population - An ethnic cleansing; A genocide. There is no other word for it. It is a strategy that Israel has adopted.