The Great Row regarding Herzog Park was over almost before it began, although Dublin City Council did pivot to agree to condemn an Taoiseach Micheál Martin for his “political interference” in the work of a local authority, which seems bizarre given the backtracking from the controversy on the basis of the proposal not being “legally sound”.
Whatever the reason for the backtrack – and there’s no doubt but that the growing international attention, and the false smears it induced against the Irish people, was a large part of it – the proposal to rename the park was a particularly petty move from the beginning. Given that its chief defender seems to be Cllr Conor Reddy of PBP, a man who tore down posters advertising a meeting of women who had become pregnant after rape, the pettiness is unsurprising – although it is curious that some of those who are most apoplectic about the Herzog Park row have previously been vocal about wanting to remove a statue of Seán Russell, mostly, I suspect, because they don’t like republican statues.
The desire to erase history is both absurd and small-minded, and its understandable that Jewish people living in Ireland will have been upset and alarmed at the proposal. It will have felt like an attack on their identity and their history. Chaim Herzog grew up in Dublin before going on to become President of Israel , and his father, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, served as Chief Rabbi of Ireland and was a Gaeilgeoir and a supporter of the cause of Irish nationalism. The sympathy felt by many Irish nationalists to the cause of Israel prior to the conflicts of the last 70 years is now largely forgotten, but it certainly existed.
I think most people would oppose removing Chaim Herzog’s name from the small park in Rathgar because they recognise that even though the IDF, who Herzog worked with during the Nakba or mass displacement of the Palestinian people, did – and continue to do some terrible things – it is a matter of historical importance that the former Israeli President lived there, and it is also important to Jewish people that this connection with Ireland is recognised.
As is common with the rows about statues elsewhere, the claim is made that some aspect(s) of the life of the person being commemorated are offensive to modern sensibilities, but the inevitable outcome of that is to have impermanent statues which is a oxymoron, or just plain moronic. An argument could be made that, as was made this week, that place names in Dublin and other cities need to be decolonised. In that regard, the sheer length of time this country spent under the boot of colonisation, the subsequent proliferation of public places named after said colonisers, and the important factor of the prior replacement of place names as Gaeilge, might make that a discussion worth having.
But the real issue that needs to be addressed, now that the renaming has been dropped, is that the pettiness and ever-mounting hysteria which has accompanied the bloodshed in Gaza is equally present on both sides of the debate, and makes hypocrites of the loudest voices on each side. Each side insists they champion free speech while cancelling others; each wants to believe nothing but the worst about each other.
And, as we have seen this past week, the hysteria and vindictiveness is used, again and again, to attack Ireland and falsely label the Irish people, as a cohort, as anti-Semitic. That needs to be challenged robustly and with equal persistence. The charge is unacceptable and it is untrue.
Social media has been choked since last weekend with by-now familiar shrill voices claiming that Ireland is anti-Semitic while presenting – and distorting – historical events as some kind of supposed evidence of same. And it’s not just Israeli commentators or journalists and their allies: senior political figures from Israel have accused Ireland of having an anti-Semitic government and institutions, and threatened to continue to “expose” us until we “truly understand that we cannot deceive the world”.
Now, I’m a stern critic (or so I am told) of Irish governments and their many failings, but this charge is hysterical and ridiculous. Dublin City Council is not the Irish government, and the looney left are not the Irish people.
The truth is that Israel seeks to punish Ireland because of widespread opposition to their bombardment of Gaza – and to make an example of us to the world. When the horrific Hamas invasion occurred on October 7th, no-one, apart from the ghouls on the far-left, felt anything but revulsion and anger at the murderous attack on Israelies. But people additionally felt – and feel – that bombing and slaughtering innocent people in Gaza, and brutalising Palestinians in a land grab in the West Bank, is also indefensible.
That rational position is mostly where middle Ireland is at. They neither support Hamas nor the IDF. And that’s why the Israelis and their allies are repeatedly seeking to demonise Ireland: because in their view there can be no rational position, there can be no middle ground. If you criticise any of Israel’s actions, you will be painted as anti-Semitic and then the real power in the room, the United States, will be urged to punish you. The shrill accusations against Ireland are also a warning to the rest of the world.
That’s the real politik of the matter, and the truth, and deciding a response based on fact or principle, doesn’t seem to matter. Except that it does. Some of the charges made against Ireland are historically illiterate. Others are just vicious.
Writing on this platform previously, William Stephens, who said he was “firmly in the pro-Israel camp” forensically took apart the absurd but deeply pernicious claim that Ireland’s neutral stance in World War II was evidence that we were anti-Jewish.
This ignorance of Irish history and unfairness in assessing it from afar mirrors the worst of the anti-Israeli prejudice which is routinely heard in Ireland, he said.
Firstly, Ireland in no way helped the Nazis in World War Two. On the contrary, any examination of the facts of what occurred between 1939-1945 shows that Ireland’s neutrality tilted heavily towards the Allied powers.
He tackled the claim made by the previous Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, that Ireland was “helping the Nazi regime by not helping Allied forces”, and describes it as “a calumny”.
“Ireland had a right to determine that it was neutral in 1939, in the same way that it has a right to be neutral today,” he said, adding “small European democracies such as the Scandinavian and Benelux countries chose as Ireland did to try to avoid being caught up in the destructive collision between Germany and its opponents. Sweden and Switzerland managed to achieve this, but as a result of Hitler’s wickedness, most of the other nations did not.
The greatest democracy of all, the United States of America, also chose neutrality, and for similar reasons.
Do Israeli diplomats make a habit of denouncing America for not being an active participant in the Second World War until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought them in? Do they accuse America of having been pro-Nazi between 1939-1941? he asked
The historian John Crotty has also spent the past few days filleting the vile allegations being made against Irish people, mostly by those who cherry-pick and obfuscate in order to deflect from the real issue, which is the displacement of a whole people from their own land.
And yes, I can both support the right of Israel to exist and understand their need for a nation, while also being horrified at some of their actions which the UN has described as genocide. So can most people. It should be obvious that this doesn’t mean we hate Jews. And pointing to the actions of a rabid priest in Ireland decades ago doesn’t make Ireland or its people as a cohort anti-Semitic.
Amongst the evidence Crotty points to is a newspaper clipping which quotes the aforementioned Dr Issac Herzog, then Chief Rabbi of Ireland, as holding up the city of Dublin to Jewish communities in other countries as an illustrious example of “broadmindedness and toleration”. No mention of that in the Spectator, I warrant.
It’s curious that many of these recent claims against Ireland are amplified by British social media accounts whose claims sometimes display a decidedly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bias. That form of prejudice lingers but is perfectly acceptable, it seems. The Spectator wants to know if we Irish need an intervention. No thanks. Your last intervention brought centuries of invasion, dispossession, and slaughter.
I heard Oliver Sears, founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland, say on Newstalk that being Jewish in Ireland has become significantly more difficult after the outbreak of war in Gaza. That is dreadful. Anti-Semitism should always be called out and condemned. There are ancient hatreds and conflicts playing out in the Middle East and across the world. We don’t make anything better by blaming Jewish people for Israel’s actions. But neither can we conflate criticism of Israel’s war campaign with hating Jews. This week, two little boys, Fadi Abu Assi and Goma Abu Assi, brothers aged 11 and 8 respectively were blown to pieces by an Israeli drone strike which deliberately targeted them as they searched for firewood.
The IDF in a statement to Sky News said that they “identified two suspects who crossed the yellow line, conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached IDF troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them”, adding “following the identification, the IAF eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat.”
Are we anti-Semitic if we condemn this atrocity?
Israel, mostly because they have the United States in their corner, have won this war. It looks like they will eventually take all of what was Palestine. It doesn’t make me or anyone else anti-Semitic to deplore that land grab. History is written, they say, by the victors. But that telling can, and should, always be challenged where it is composed of false allegations and even downright lies.