Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday rebuked the Irish ambassador to Israel days after the Dublin City Council passed two anti-Israel resolutions and the city’s mayor attended a pro-Palestine conference in Ramallah.
The Israeli ministry said its deputy director-general for European Affairs Rodica Radian Gordon expressed to Ambassador Alison Kelly her “astonishment and deep disappointment” over the fact that Dublin’s Lord Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha had chosen to participate in a “blatantly anti-Israel event” according to Israeli news outlets.
“This is particularly disturbing in light of the event’s timing in the week in which Israel observes Holocaust Remembrance Day” the ministry claimed in a statement. “The government of Israel expects a public and official Irish response to the conduct of the city council of Ireland’s capital in general and of its head in specific which are conducting a campaign of discrimination and hatred against Israel.”
On Wednesday COGAT the office of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories posted a photo of Mac Donncha at the Ramallah conference sitting under a huge banner of the Palestinian mufti.
The post went on: “Is this an unfortunate act of innocence on Mr. Mac Donncha’s part? Maybe not.”
Earlier this week Dublin’s city council passed two resolutions endorsing the anti-Israel boycott movement and calling on the national government to expel the Israeli ambassador.
As a result of those votes Israel’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said Tuesday that he would bar Mac Donncha from entering Israel on his way to a conference on the status of Occupied Jerusalem in Ramallah.
However Mac Donncha entered the country via Ben Gurion Airport without any problem apparently because Israeli border authorities misspelled his name.
On Wednesday Deri said he had ordered an inquiry into what went wrong — “so that lessons can be learned.” He also said the mayor would be given a letter on leaving Israel barring him from returning.
One of the two resolutions passed by the Dublin City Councilors read: “Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights and has refused to comply with international law.”
The resolution proposed by leftist Councilor John Lyons goes on to level various accusations against Israel before stating that “this City Council fully supports and endorses the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement for freedom equality and justice.”
The text further states that Dublin will cut all business ties with Hewlett-Packard arguing that the technology giant “provides and operates much of the technology infrastructure that Israel uses to maintain its system of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people.”
The other resolution proposed by Mac Donncha called on the national government to expel Israel’s ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker.
The spokesperson of Israel’s Foreign Ministry Emmanuel Nahshon denounced the resolution “as utter nonsense” that is “worthy of dark dictatorships.”
