A damning new report reveals how senior Irish politicians have approved of material that appears to sympathise with Hitler’s view of Jews, shared a post blaming Israel for 9/11 and engaged in an “orgy of condemnation” of the Jewish state, in parliament and beyond.
The 200-page dossier on antisemitism in Irish public life reveals how Chris Andrews, a Sinn Fein TD (member of the Irish parliament), liked a comment on his Facebook page in 2018 that called Israelis “murdering Zionist bastards” and seemed to suggest that Hitler may “not have been too far wrong”.
The report, compiled by investigative journalist David Collier, also features Mick Wallace, an Independent Irish MEP who in 2018 shared an article from a right- wing website that suggested Jews control the media.
The piece posted by Mr Wallace blamed Israel for the attack on the Twin Towers and described Jewishness as a “tribal sociopathy”.
Mr Andrews, meanwhile, has promoted the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and the “from the river to the sea” slogan – the Hamas war cry that is widely seen as a call for the end of Israel.
Detained and deported by Israel in 2011 for trying to break the blockade on Gaza, Mr Andrews branded Israel an “apartheid, racist, terror state” during a debate in the Dail (the Irish parliament) in May.
Niall Collins, the Fianna Fail party’s Minister of State for Skills and Education, recently referred to a “huge Jewish lobby”, for which he later apologised. Mr Collins has posted condemnation of Israel’s human rights record on Twitter and Facebook while celebrating potential trade deals with China despite their brutal oppression of Uyghur Muslims. And in 2017, Aengus O Snodaigh, TD for Dublin South Central, branded Israel “one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet.”
At the time, he was Sinn Fein’s spokesman on international affairs and human rights.
In the wake of the 11-day Gaza conflict in May, the Dail debated whether to expel the Israeli ambassador and support the anti-Israel BDS movement. While the motion was defeated, the report says it provoked a “truly shocking orgy of condemnation against Israel.
“Deputy after deputy, speech after speech, the appalling accusations directed at a sovereign nation trying to defend its citizens from over 4,000 Iranian-sponsored rockets fired into its civilian territory over an 11-day period earlier that month were so extreme that Foreign Minister Simon Coveney visibly winced,” the report said.
Ireland this year took part in the Durban IV event — the anniversary of the notorious 2001 UN conference in Durban, which descended into a parade of antisemitic hatred and was dubbed the “worst manifestation of antisemitism since WWII”.
The UK government boycotted the anniversary event, as did the European Union.
On 4 October, 47 states pledged to combat antisemitism at the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Ireland did not sign the pledge.
None of the politicians mentioned returned a request for comment.
