Energy News Beat
Ireland’s antisemitism controversy flared up again on Sunday after President Michael D. Higgins raised Gaza during a speech to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, sparking protests.
Security staff forcibly removed at least one woman who objected to the president’s remarks. Others who turned their backs on Higgins were asked to leave, The Irish Times reported.
The latest row could hardly come at a worse time for the Irish government. Last month, Israel said it would close its Dublin embassy, accusing Ireland of “antisemitic rhetoric” and “double standards” over its over its attitude to the world’s only Jewish state.
Ireland has endorsed South Africa’s ongoing International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, and its parliament passed a resolution making the same allegation in November.
The accusation of genocide – a term coined to describe Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate European Jews – is incendiary for many Jewish people. The American Jewish Committee, among others, says the allegation distorts the word’s meaning, and points to Israeli efforts to limit civilian harm as evidence that it’s not true.
This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, on Monday, is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
‘The rubble in Gaza’
Higgins did not repeat the accusation on Sunday. But with tension already high, raising the Gaza war in a speech commemorating the Holocaust, while standing before a giant screen displaying an image of Auschwitz, was bound to hit a nerve.
All the more so, given that Irish presidents have traditionally kept their political opinions to themselves.
The president said he hoped Israelis mourning their loved ones, those waiting for Hamas to release hostages, “or the thousands searching for relatives in the rubble in Gaza will welcome the long-overdue ceasefire.”
In many settings, acknowledging both Israeli and Palestinian suffering would be uncontroversial.
But doing so at a Holocaust memorial event left the impression of linking the war in Gaza to the worst crime in history – one that drove many of the European Jews who survived to seek refuge in Israel.
Prior doubts
There were already doubts about Higgins’s appearance at the event before he spoke. Several representatives of Ireland’s Jewish community asked him not to give the speech because of his past comments about Israel, according to The Irish Times.
In December, Higgins called Israel’s charge that Ireland is antisemitic “gross defamation and slander.”
Nevertheless, the Dublin-based Israeli academic whom security staff threw out told The Irish Times she came prepared to give Higgins the benefit of the doubt, and only turned her back after he mentioned Gaza.
“The beginning of the speech was lovely,” Lior Tibet told the paper. “That’s why we didn’t get up at that point. We are all great supporters of human rights. We have problems with what Israel is doing,”
At an EU foreign affairs meeting in Brussels on Monday, Simon Harris – who is both Ireland’s foreign minister and its deputy prime minister – said the country would increase its funding of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which preserves the memorial at the former death camp.
Harris didn’t say whether the decision was linked to the furore in Dublin on Sunday. But he did say Higgins was right to mention the situation in the Middle East.
“I am conscious, though, that this is a a very, very sensitive time,” Harris added.
Ireland formed a new government on Thursday led by the same two centre-right partners – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – that have been in coalition together since 2020.
[MK]
We give you energy news and help invest in energy projects too, click here to learn more
Crude Oil, LNG, Jet Fuel price quote
ENB Top News
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack
The post Irish president’s Holocaust memorial speech reignites antisemitism row appeared first on Energy News Beat.
