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<\/p>\nA proposal to rename the Dublin park, named after the former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, was conceded to be not \u201clegally sound\u201d by council management and has been shelved.<\/p>\n
Herzog, who was the sixth president of Israel, was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin. The park was named after him in 1995.<\/p>\n
On Monday night, Dublin City Council voted to send the issue of renaming the park in Rathgar, driven by outcry at Israel\u2019s conduct of the war in Gaza, back to the relevant council committee.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Israel’s minister for foreign affairs Gideon Sa’ar. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n
Today’s News in 90 – Tuesday, December 2 <\/p>\n
During an Israeli Foreign Ministry event held on Tuesday, Irish ambassador to Israel Sonya McGuinness posed a question to Gideon Sa\u2019ar, the Israeli foreign minister.<\/p>\n
In a video of the exchange shared on his X account, Mr Sa\u2019ar said \u201cIreland is sick with the antisemitic virus\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms McGuinness said: \u201cMinister, I\u2019m glad to hear you mention the scourge of antisemitism, but I would have thought that it must be carefully managed and not used for political gain.<\/p>\n
“Antisemitism is a scourge and must be countered, and therefore, don\u2019t you think facts are important?\u201d<\/p>\n
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In response, Mr Sa\u2019ar described the proposed renaming of Herzog Park as an \u201cantisemitic proposed decision\u201d and said \u201cnothing happened\u201d until he and Isaac Herzog, the current president of Israel and the son of Chaim Herzog, \u201cattacked the proposal\u201d.<\/p>\n
“Why? Why? Because you\u2019re only responding. There is nothing in your system right now that can defend you from that virus of antisemitism, except external pressure, and exposing the antisemitic nature of this Government of Ireland and other institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point in the exchange, Ms McGuinness interrupts, twice telling Mr Sa\u2019ar: \u201cI\u2019m afraid you\u2019re ill-informed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spoke over Mc McGuinness and continued, saying: \u201cWe will continue to do that, and we will continue to expose you, until you will understand that you cannot deceive the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
“You are ill-informed minister,\u201d Ms McGuinness then repeated.<\/p>\n
In a statement released prior to the withdrawal of the proposal to rename Herzog Park, Mr Sa\u2019ar described Dublin as the \u201ccapital of antisemitism in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said there is no decision \u201cmore accurate and just\u201d than the one he made to close the Israeli embassy in Dublin shortly after he took up the office of foreign minister.<\/p>\n
Following Mr Sa\u2019ar\u2019s claim that Ireland had used \u201cantisemitic rhetoric\u201d in December 2024, former president Michael D Higgins said it is \u201cdeep slander\u201d to accuse the Irish people of being antisemitic for criticising the Israeli government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A proposal to rename the Dublin park, named after the former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, was conceded to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8335,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-212156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-darragh-nolan","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115652482443417325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}