Israel closing their embassy in Dublin *Read OP for Mod Warning added 19/12/24*

To use the examples provided by the IHRA definition of antisemitism (and which have been adopted by the EU and every EU country bar Ireland and Malta (which the Israelis regard positively)):

“Applying double standards by requiring of it (Israel) a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Compare our politicians constant criticism of Israel with their utterly non-existent criticism of the US during its post 9/11 wars - which the Washington Post reported resulted in 4.5 million civilian casualties (900,000 directly as a result of combat, 3.6 million as a result of damage to water and sewage treatment and resulting disease). That’s clear double standards and is antisemitic.

Three more examples are:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

All three of these have routinely been used by many of our politicians and / or commentators - and all are antisemitic.

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” is the only example of anti-Semitism there.

If any Israel polices are comparable to Nazi Germany (I'm not saying they are) then it is fair to draw that comparison, that is not anti-Semitism.

The state of Israel is by definition a racist endeavour. It is literally a Jewish supremacist state that seeks to remove Palestinians from their land and deny them their right to self determination.

“Applying double standards by requiring of it (Israel) a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is a trap, whereby if you don't criticise every single thing a democratic nation does wrong, then you can't criticise Israel.

Israel tends to come in for more criticism that other democratic nations because it has been engaged in ethnic cleansing since it's inception. In the last year Israeli forces have destroyed more hospitals, schools, infrastructure, farmland - killed more children, journalists, aid workers, medical personnel than any other conflict worldwide. Oh and it's actively committing genocide! So yeah, it tends to get a fair bit of criticism from other nations.

There you go, moving the goalposts. The irish government has been consistently criticizing Hamas and Iran.

I noticed you ignored my other post. Care to reply to that? Do you actually think everyone on this thread, The Irish government and over 70% of the irish population hate jewish people just because they are jewish people.

some of your examples are bizarre.

the self determination argument is fair but what's interesting is that the lobby groups (like ADL and other jewish groups ) would decry any European who wanted their homeland to be homogeneous but its demanded for Jewish people. I actually believe it is correct for all peoples to have a homeland that is theirs.

Israeli policy - if people see parallel to Nazism then why is Israel so special that you cannot call them out . This is just a policy to silence the critics of israel

The collective responsibility is sounds fair but since the vast majority of jews support isreal you are splitting hairs and fighting over the venacual of Jewish versus Israeli versus Zionist. That Venn diagram has a very large centre. Sure its not 100% precise but its close enough - what I mean is we all know what is being said. Its the victimhood of Israeli uses this argument again to silence critics.

The attack of labelling somebody as antisemitic is a weapon to demonise critics of Israel (or any jewish groups tbh) . It has no substance but to attack the person. Its as lame as internet heros calling everybody they don't like racist.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/1216/1486678-israeli-embassy/

A spokesperson for the Taoiseach said this evening that Mr Harris "will not be responding to personalised and false attacks"

Calling Harris an anti-semite is a "false attack" apparently. In fairness though, how would the Israelis know what anti-semitism is?

If Israel are committing war crimes and genocide (which is extremely probable), how can it ever be antisemetic to attempt to hold them to account? What they are doing has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism surely, it is all to do with politics and war.

Ireland sought amendments to broaden the definition of genocide to include the use of starvation. This is what Israel are up in arms about, and why they closed the embassy. The optics of this looks like a tacit admittance that they are using starvation of civilians as a method of war.

Given our history with the famine, which cast our diaspora across the world just like the Jewish - I think it is an understandable and courageous step to take by our government, and if it proves false, Israel have nothing to worry about.

Israel's response has been completely orchestrated and non sensical. Now the internet is awash with reports of Ireland being an anti semetic country, Nazi supporters during ww2 as Devalera (awfully) sent a condolence letter to Hitler, whilst completely ignoring that 100s of thousands of Irish fought for the allies, freed Jews from camps etc, despite being a neutral country, whilst oh yea... Ignoring Germany (who they are now friends with) for actually, you know, being Hitlers country and the one where Nazis carried out the holocaust. It makes no sense.

Israeli embassies are still open in Russia, still open in South Africa (who brought the genocide case), still open in Spain and Norway, who are co signatories to recognize Palestine.

I ma hearing we are the most antisemetic and dangerous country for Jews in Europe, yet Israel leaves Jews here without consular assistance - because, you guessed it, this is one of the safest countries in Europe for Jewish people. Nobody outside of those refugee protest types (who's politicians got I believe 1% of election results) give a jot what religion you are and people are left alone with any God or none.

To my knowledge, there has never been one..ONE...case of antisemetic murder in Ireland's history, yet countries with a far worse records are given a pass because they are staying quiet on this war? Now that is selective targeting of Irish people.

It all makes zero sense until you talk about America and the Irish lobby there. This whole charade is a cynical attempt to sway the American populace away from being pro - Irish, and the Israeli government and their bots are lying and throwing whatever horsesh*t they can at us to keep USA in their favour.

I agree they know exactly what antisemitism is, I'm sure of that.

I'm sure you also agree that, hypothetically of course, it could be possible for individuals to be untruthful in their accusations of it for political purposes?

I think it could backfire on them...antisemitism is a serious accusation and should not be used for political purposes. These accusations could make the fact they are completely false apparent.

Irish and Jewish lobbyists work together very closely in the USA. Many Irish are working in upper echelons of US companies that are based here, as are Jewish etc. and I'm sure get on v well with each other.

The Irish diaspora are prominent in business, and in both democratic and republican politics in USA (as well as UK politics closer to home), and the Irish diaspora, regardless of their political allegiance, still have strong links to the land of their people and are aware of our history.

Many Irish Americans still have v close links with Ireland and the Irish, care about us, have loads of families and friends here and visit here regularly, and will see for themselves that the accusations of this particularly shameful iteration of Israeli government are cynical and baseless.

If you are a representative of the Jewish state and misuse the term I would imagine it would backfire quite badly at home. That doesn't seem to have happened

Irish neutrality is clearly gone on this war and we have alligned ourselves with the Palestinians, Lebanese and the Iranians. Good for us or not? We will wait and see

No offense, but I would say Israelis are as ignorant of us as we are of them. I've said this in another thread, 99% of Irish people have probably never met an Israeli or Palestinians, so would have no negative or positive experiences of either to inform their views of them one way or another. That isn't to say there are prejudiced people long here of course.

And re Iran and Lebanese - I don't think the Irish are being political here - we see Palestinian civilians and children being bombed, shot and starved. Their politics or religion don't and shouldn't matter - we see it as wrong, which the Israeli government are trying to provide false reasoning for.

To my mind, we could be accused of being politically naive, but morally we are doing the right thing and surely that is more important than the games countries play.

It is a big worry for the economy when Trump gets into power given he is a great friend to Israel and the powerful Jewish lobby in the States. Let's hope the measures he brings in won't be too bad. Fair play to Harris etc for standing their ground and coming across very reasonable.

Probably the Intel workers causing it 😀😂

last night I went onto /israel on redit to see what they were saying. I found the thread on the embassy closure. Lots of anti Irish stuff. A lot of stuff along the lines of the Irish are terrorists so of course they love terrorists. And others saying everyone in Ireland hates jewish people and Ireland has always been famous for antisemitism.

I replied to a post about the IRA and said actually, the IRA are illegal and membership has always been illegal.

I was banned 20 mins later and the mods immediately blocked me so I couldn't appeal it.

This is utter, despicable nonsense.

Any country, including Israel, that uses starvation as a weapon of war, deserves the opprobrium of right-minded people everywhere. That extends to bringing those countries to international tribunals to answer for alleged crimes against humanity.

The Irish government could have made a number of reasonable points that would have held Israel to account without taking sides as it did.

In the end, Israel is probably the closest ally of the country that invests more money into our economy than anyone else.

With that in mind we should have had the cop on and self interest to not wade into a complex situation like that and pick sides, potentially leaving ourselves open to financial ramifications.

The governments response could also be seen as reasonably intentioned but we also have TD's in opposition who have been marching in Keffiyeh's in support of Palestine and refusing to condemn the October 7th attacks. So it's little wonder the Israelis see Ireland as an openly hostile place.

The closure of any embassy isn't something to be celebrated, it indicates something is very wrong.

We're already seeing some nasty opinions crop up in relation to Jews as a group, I just hope we don't slide too far down that path, right now it doesn't look particularly good.