Sagit Ben Zekry

Hello, all. An important post. Please read this document. This is what institutional antisemitism looks like. In Dublin, there is a park named Herzog Park. It is named after Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), an Irish-Israeli man, born in Belfast and raised in Dublin, who went on to be Israel’s 6th President. Chaim was the son of Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who was Chief Rabbi of Ireland and Israel’s first Chief Rabbi. He was a firm friend of Eamon De Valera, Ireland’s most famous political leader, and strongly supported the Irish Republican cause during our War of Independence. Dublin City Council has made an antisemitic decision to change the name of Herzog park, a blatant attempt to erase Irish-Jewish history. Last year, I wrote in the Irish Times: ‘now that the Jewish population in Ireland has been reduced to the smallest fragment, my great fear is that in 20 years it will be reduced to nothing at all: due to this lack of welcome in a land that purports to offer a thousand of them. Irish people will follow the well-paved path of the citizens of so many nations before them: walking through quarters where the whisper of Jewish memory lingers, a memory that may, over time, also be erased.’ This erasure has not come gradually over 20 years as I anticipated. No—it has come a mere 1 year later, purposefully and maliciously by Ireland’s political class. Ireland is an institutionally antisemitic country. To deny it in the face of such overwhelming evidence is pure folly.