Ireland’s outgoing president will give a keynote speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day event later this week, despite being asked not to do so by the (also soon-to-depart) Israeli ambassador.
Michael D. Higgins has made a number of false statements about Israel since the October 7th terror attack and, according to ambassador Dana Erlichm, could overshadow the upcoming commemorative event, organised by Holocaust Education Ireland.
Erlichm said that while Holocaust Memorial Day should be
something solemn, focusing on Holocaust remembrance, Holocaust education, and preventing antisemitism from rising again… just “the fact that we are not talking about the event, but we are talking about [Higgins’] presence… distracts from the event.
Journalist David Quinn—dismayed by “such tension between a president of Ireland and our tiny Jewish community”—also questioned whether Higgins will “(a) speak about the other victims of the Nazis in a way that diminishes the unique evil done to the Jews and/or (b) compare the war in Gaza with the Holocaust?”
It’s very possible he will.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar last month announced the closure of his country’s embassy in Dublin, citing “extreme anti-Israel policy”—this after Ireland joined a lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder has more recently said Higgins has “neglected even to acknowledge the scourge of contemporary antisemitism in Ireland, let alone do anything to address it.” A report last year in the Jewish News Syndicate described “many” Jews living in Ireland as “trying to survive under incessant antisemitic fire.”
Wieder will attend the commemorative event regardless, despite previous reports claiming he wouldn’t.
Holocaust Education Ireland also drew criticism for inviting the president to make an address—a decision which Oliver Sears, from Holocaust Awareness Ireland, described as “thoughtless.”
The president’s office responded that “he has again and again strongly condemned antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism.”
