Ireland’s president rejected pleas to withdraw from giving a speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day event, confirming the fears of his critics by drawing an analogy between Nazi Germany’s extermination of six million Jews and Israel’s actions in Gaza, actions triggered by the Hamas October 7th pogrom.
Attendants at the event turned their backs, and some left the room, when Irish president Michael D. Higgins predictably raised the conflict in the Middle East, saying:
I believe that those in Israel who mourn their loved ones, those who have been waiting for the release of hostages, or the thousands searching for relatives in the rubble of Gaza, will welcome the long-overdue ceasefire, for which there has been such a heavy price paid.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked the president as “despicable” for echoing “Hamas’ antisemitic lies and propaganda at a Holocaust memorial ceremony.”
Ambassador Dana Erlichm added that Higgins was wrong in choosing to “ignore the obvious link between the Holocaust and the State of Israel and how our country became a refuge for survivors of the worst genocide in history.”
Even Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Harris—who described Higgins’ mention of Gaza at an event marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz as “right”—said he was “not sure” if the president’s speech had been vetted by the foreign office ahead of its delivery.
A row has also emerged over the treatment of those who expressed their dismay over the president’s speech. Some, said Irish senator Gerard Craughwell, were “manhandled” out of the room, even though “all they did was stand up and turn their back.”
Lior Tibet, a 37-year-old Jewish woman who was forcibly removed from the room, along with a pregnant Jewish friend, despite protesting silently said
After what happened yesterday I’m really worried about how this will affect my kids. The atmosphere in Ireland is not what it used to be.
And Israeli deputy minister Sharren Haskel, who could become Jerusalem’s next ambassador to the UK, said that she does now “fear for the safety of Jews in Ireland.”
The events prompted The Jewish Chronicle to publish a piece asking: “Is Ireland the most antisemitic country in the West?”
“It could not be more appalling,” said the article’s author, and editor of the Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simons.
An event commemorating the Shoah —the Shoah—was interrupted by the forcible ejection of a Jewish historian because she objected to a speech by a man who was accused of “spewing lies” after alleging that Israel would like “to have a settlement in Egypt.” Most bafflingly of all, it did not seem to occur to the security men that manhandling a Jew at a Holocaust event would ring certain ironical bells.
Other writers claim that Higgins’ rhetoric has prompted some to ask: “What is Ireland’s problem with Jews?”
