Ireland's badge of dishonor in its phony war with Israel

A week of escalating tensions in the Ireland-Israel phony war, marked by diplomatic clashes, embassy closure, and controversial statements.

By ALAN SHATTER DECEMBER 22, 2024 16:41 Updated: DECEMBER 22, 2024 16:48

Relations between Israel and Ireland. (photo credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

On Tuesday, December 17, Dr Jilan Wahba Abdul Majid, elevated from Palestine’s representative to ambassadorial status following Ireland’s recognition of the State of Palestine in May 2024, formally presented her credentials to a joyous Irish President Micheal D Higgins. 

President Higgins used the occasion to criticize Israel for breaching the sovereignty of two of its neighbors, Lebanon and Syria, falsely accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wanting to establish a settlement in Egypt, and lambasted  Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, for his depiction of Ireland’s Taoiseach ( prime minister), Simon Harris, as an antisemite, wrongly conflating it to be a “ slanderous”  allegation made against the Irish people.

The next day, Wednesday, a picture of the ambassador inspecting an Irish army guard of honor outside the presidential residence dominated the front page of The Irish Times, Ireland’s self-proclaimed paper of record.

The picture’s publication fittingly coincided with the  Dáil, Ireland's principal parliamentary chamber, meeting for the first time that day after the recent Irish general election.

Following the election of a new Speaker to chair meetings of the chamber and a variety of speeches, it adjourned to facilitate continuing discussions about the formation of a new coalition government.

Simon Harris speaks to the media during Ireland’s general election, in Greystones, Ireland (credit: TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS)

Both Ireland’s outgoing Prime Minister, Simon Harris, and its outgoing Deputy Prime Minister & Foreign Minister, Micheal Martin, singled out Israel for demonization when speaking. 

Harris accused Israel of “engaging in the most amoral and brutal onslaught of innocent people and terrified children” and Martin of engaging “in the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”  

Neither complicated their narrative by mentioning any other aspect of the ongoing conflict, such as hostages still held captive in Gaza, missiles still targeting Israel, firefights between Hamas and the IDF, Hamas’s objective to resume its brutal rule of Gaza and promise to repeat its October 7 atrocities nor spoke of any other foreign affairs issue.

While Martin at least criticized Hamas for “ terrorizing their own people” and committing “terrible acts,” no criticism of Hamas featured in Harris’s inflammatory commentary. Neither had anything to say about Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis,  the extraordinary events in Syria since Ireland’s election took place, the catastrophic famine in Sudan, nor the Russia/ Ukraine war.

Lowering the Irish flag 

Friday morning, outside Israel’s Dublin Embassy, the Israeli flag was lowered and removed by embassy officials in the absence of Dana Erlich, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, who was recalled to Jerusalem last May. 

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A symbolic prelude to the embassy’s closure, as announced by Gideon Saar at the start of the week. 

The day before, a group of Israel’s vitriolic Irish adversaries and protestors gathered outside the embassy building to celebrate what they perceived as Israel’s capitulation to their obsessive campaigning and weekly street protests and their victory in effecting its closure and Erlich’s permanent departure. 

Just a normal week of non diplomatic engagement in the escalating Ireland/ Israel phoney war.

Pending the election of a new Prime Minister and agreement on a new program for government, the outgoing Irish administration continues to be in office with caretaker responsibilities.

The new Irish government will essentially be a reincarnation of the old, formed by two centrist parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who are now politically indistinguishable and only differ in personalities. 

Centrist in everything save for their adoption of the extreme left-wing anti-Israeli invective of Ireland’s opposition parties. By the end of January 2025, the current Taoiseach, Fine Gael’s Simon Harris, will likely become Foreign Minister, and the current Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Fianna Fail’s Micheal Martin, will become Taoiseach. 

Halfway through the new government's five-year term or at the end of year three, it will be agreed that the roles reverse. 

A similar game of political musical chairs was acted out during the life of the outgoing government.

In the realm of international affairs, most time was spent in the last Dáil after October 7, 2023, by both the government and all opposition parties engaged in a repetitive orgy of relentless demonizing of Israel with occasional ritual references to the plight of the hostages. 

A form of political amnesia set in, resulting in initial government condemnation of the Hamas pogrom of October 7 being rapidly replaced by a cross-party narrative of Israel for no reason arbitrarily bombing and killing civilians in Gaza, in particular children, and then repeating its conduct in Lebanon. 

This replicated a narrative popularised by various Irish media outlets, including RTE, Ireland’s state-funded national TV and radio broadcaster, and favored by Ireland’s student unions and trade union movement, including its National Union of Journalists.

During 2024, this was accompanied by the Irish government

• Ignoring Iran’s malign role in the Middle East save when it directly attacked Israel, its dedication to Israel’s destruction, and its sponsoring and arming of its self-proclaimed Axis of Resistance, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other fanatical Islamic groups 
• Deepening its relationship with Iran throughout the conflict, Ireland’s President in July described Iran as playing a crucial role in achieving stability and the peaceful resolution of disputes across the Middle East in a fawning congratulatory letter to Iran’s new President and Ireland opening an embassy in Tehran in September 2025.
• Ignoring Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, the existence of an extensive Hamas tunnel network throughout Gaza either under or adjacent to mosques, UN facilities, hospitals, schools, and residences, the firing of missiles from such locations, storage of armaments and the hiding of Hamas combatants within them as well as captive hostages
• Ignoring the thousands of missiles fired by Hamas and Hezbollah at Israel from 7th October 2023 onwards and refraining from any public criticism of Hezbollah, despite its actions placing at risk the lives of Irish UNIFIL troops located in Southern Lebanon
• Embracing unquestioned all statistics of Palestinian fatalities  published by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Authority for which it held Israel  solely responsible, ignoring the statistics inconsistencies, the absence of any reference to combatant deaths or to deaths resulting from Hamas & Islamic Jihad missiles falling in Gaza 
• Criticizing any criticism voiced of UNRWA employees participating in the October 7 atrocities, allegations of UNRWA employees' membership of terrorist organizations, and increasing its financial donations to UNRWA
• Ignoring all allegations of terrorist organizations stealing aid delivered to Gaza and repetitively accusing Israel of weaponizing starvation
• Doing nothing to counter escalating antisemitism in Ireland and false narratives about Judaism and Israel contaminating school texts and online educational material 
• Failing to send a single government representative to the Dublin Jewish communal service held in October 2024 to commemorate those barbarically  slaughtered a year earlier, despite 22-year-old Kim Damti, an Irish citizen, being one of those murdered at the Nova Music festival and another Irish citizen,  then eight-year-old Emily Hand of Kibbutz Be’eri, being abducted to Gaza and due to Israeli government engagement being released in December 2023

Promising to enact an Occupied Territories Bill that violates EU law to criminalize all trade with any business located in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank that will impact all communities, both Israeli and Palestinian, ludicrously will criminalize Irish pilgrims who, when visiting the Holy Land purchase goods in Nazareth, Bethlehem or East Jerusalem and is a Trojan horse that could be applied to all trade with Israel. 

To this can be added.

Iran’s ambassador to Ireland was an honored guest at all of Ireland’s main political parties' spring 2024 political conferences, with Israel’s ambassador excluded and boycotted.

Upon Harris becoming leader of Fine Gael, he arranged that an invitation already issued to Israel’s ambassador to his party’s conference be withdrawn; in his party conference speech denouncing Netanyahu’s “repulsive” actions in the presence of Iran’s ambassador and demanding “ ceasefire now” and a two-state solution, pretending Israel could unilaterally end the war and implement such solution in the immediate aftermath of October 7 and ignoring its total rejection by Iran,  Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups. 

Ireland’s parliament distinguished itself during 2024 by both government and opposition parties when addressing Israeli-related issues, abandoning Ireland’s much-vaunted attachment to a concept of neutrality just prior to its dissolution, with no dissenting voices, determining Israel guilty of genocide. 

This was followed after the election by Martin announcing Ireland’s intention to join South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel and to invite the court to broaden its interpretation of genocide to apply it to Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas.  

The Irish government's contradiction 

The Irish government is simultaneously accusing Israel of genocide while recognizing nothing done by Israel to defend its citizens against Hamas terrorism currently falls within the existing international law concept of genocide. 

This, together with Harris’s much-repeated blood libel allegation that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children, is what triggered Gideon Saar’s antisemitic depiction of Harris and the closure of Israel’s Dublin embassy. 

It is a pity that before announcing its closure and handing a victory to Israel’s adversaries, Saar didn’t fully realize that Harris is merely a political opportunist who has never visited the Middle East. His initial knowledge of the conflict derives from TikTok and Irish media, that he knows nothing of Jewish history, is addicted to media-friendly student soundbites, and determined to appease Ireland’s Israel haters.

Privately, it can be assumed that both Harris and Martin are delighted by the closure of the embassy.

At the commencement of the new Dáil last Wednesday, Martin observed that “one of the things that most encourages cynicism about politics is when our time is wasted on empty gestures and grandstanding”. 

At that moment, he presented as oblivious to that being a succinct depiction of the Irish government's over-year-long pronouncements on the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict.

Save for the Israeli embassy closure and rewarding terrorism by Ireland’s announced recognition of the State of Palestine, the fulminations of Harris and Martin during 2024 achieved absolutely nothing other than the unique distinction of Ireland becoming the only state within the EU to be the recipient of a Tehran issued a congratulatory statement from Hamas for engaging in lawfare by joining South Africa’s ICJ genocide case.  

How this badge of dishonor and the Irish government's conduct since October 7, 2023, is viewed by the incoming Trump administration in the United States, what impact it may have on Ireland/ US diplomatic relations and trade, and whether it may result in Trump canceling the annual invitation to Micheal Martin, who will by then be Ireland’s Prime Minister, to the annual St Patrick's Day shindig in the White House remains to be seen.

The writer is a former Irish Minister for Justice, Equality, & Defence, a former member of the EU Council of Justice and Home Affairs Minister, and a former Chairperson of the Irish Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee. He is currently the voluntary Chairperson of Magen David Adom Ireland.