From criticism to closure: How did Irish-Israeli relations get to this point?

Over a decade ago, Michael D Higgins, then still future president of the Republic of Ireland, visited the town of Sderot with a delegation of Irish officials.

During their excursion to the municipality building for a meeting with Sderot’s mayor, the delegation members were informed that should the siren go off. They would have 17 seconds to get to the stairwell in lieu of a lower-floor bomb shelter.

Sure enough, a few minutes into the mayoral welcome, Islamist terrorists from the Gaza Strip fired a missile at Sderot and the siren sounded. As both hosts and guests made their way to the stairwell, Higgins was left rather flustered as he struggled to make his way to safety.

It would seem that Higgins learned little of the realities of life for Israel’s southern citizens. Since that visit, he has gone on to become president of the republic and a vicious critic of the Jewish state and its actions toward its Palestinian neighbors.

This week, Higgins dismissed Israeli accusations of ingrained antisemitism in Ireland as “deep slander” and accused the Jewish state of seeking to build settlements in Egypt, according to statements he made to the press on Tuesday.

Higgins was responding to the Foreign Ministry’s decision to close Israel’s Embassy in Ireland in light of the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the decision on Sunday. The ministry announcement also noted that, in the past, Israel’s ambassador to Dublin was recalled following Ireland’s unilateral decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

Sa’ar’s statement read, “The actions and antisemitic rhetoric used by Ireland against Israel are rooted in the delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish state, along with double standards. Ireland has crossed every redline in its relations with Israel,” bringing Irish-Israeli relations to a new nadir.

“The current level of difficulty and hostility [from the Irish government] is something that’s grown over about 20 years,” former Irish defense and justice and equality minister Alan Shatter told The Jerusalem Post.

“When I was in cabinet from 2011 to 2014, there were always some issues relating to Israel that gave rise to interesting discussions between Ireland and Israel. They were primarily about ensuring that steps were taken towards achieving a two-state solution.

“We had Irish UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. We had Irish forces also in the UN [forces] on the Golan Heights. So there was an amount of connectivity, but the level of hostility that we see today, the type of anti-Israeli, shortsighted policies adopted by the current Irish government, were not something that featured during my three-and-a-half years in cabinet; and I know, on occasions, that my expertise relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sought to ameliorate some of the more hostile approaches that may have been taken during that period.”

A brief history of Irish-Israeli relations

The strong relationship between Ireland and the Palestinians dates back decades. The Irish nationalist movement has long viewed the Palestinian cause through a similar lens of seeking to overthrow what they see as oppressive colonizers and achieve independent statehood, particularly aligning the Irish Republican Army (IRA) with the PLO.

By the late 1960s, Ireland grew increasingly concerned about Palestinians displaced by the Six-Day War. In 1969, Irish foreign minister Frank Aiken highlighted this issue as a top priority in Ireland’s Middle East policy. Since then, Ireland has supported UN resolutions calling for Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territories captured during the war.

The connection between the Northern Ireland-based IRA and the PLO was most evident in the 1970s and early 1980s, often depicted in murals in nationalist areas. A notable example in Belfast showed armed IRA and PLO members with the slogan “IRA-PLO one struggle.” Sinn Féin linked its political strategy with movements like the ANC and PLO to provide a broader political context for its efforts. This alignment was regularly featured in the Sinn Féin newspaper An Phoblacht and grew stronger under Gerry Adams’s leadership in the 1980s.

“Sinn Féin are an important part of the history of where we are today,” Shatter, a member of the Irish Parliament for over 31 years, stated. “One of the oddities of the Northern Ireland conflict that occurred in the 1970s was within the strong Republican, pro-IRA areas, through massive murals painted on walls demonizing the IDF and expressing support for Palestinians. And that was within the Catholic pro-Republican community. Within the loyalist or Protestant community, [there were] equally massive murals or pictures depicting members of the IDF in heroic stances and expressing support for Israel.”

In 1980, Ireland became the first European Union member state to support the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the PLO opened an office in the Irish capital in 1993, the same year Israel opened its embassy. In 1999, then-taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Bertie Ahern visited Gaza, meeting PLO chief Yasser Arafat and touring the Jabalya refugee camp, becoming the first national leader to fly directly from the Palestinian territories to their home country. In 2001, Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen also visited Gaza to meet Arafat.

Current issues

In May of this year, Ireland joined Spain and Norway in officially recognizing a Palestinian state.

“Recognition is an act of powerful political and symbolic value,” Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said at the time.

“It is an expression of our view that Palestine holds and should be able to vindicate the full rights of the state, including self-determination, self-governance, territorial integrity, and security, as well as recognizing Palestine’s obligations under international law,” he stressed.

In response, then-foreign minister Israel Katz recalled Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich.

Ireland’s attitude toward Israel since the Hamas attacks of October 7 has led to an increasing disassociation between the two countries. Ireland was initially slower than many of its counterparts to condemn Hamas’s actions and has continuously repeated the various narratives coming out of Gaza, especially regarding civilian fatalities, a number provided to the world by Hamas itself.

Watching any comments by major Irish political figures – particularly President Higgins, Prime Minister Harris or Foreign Minister Micheal Martin – one will find a trend: reference to Israeli hostages and that hostages should be released, but quickly followed with an increasingly one-sided, anti-Israel narrative in criticizing events in Gaza. Harris, in particular, has come across as increasingly ignorant of the facts of war, despite the terrible recent experiences of the Irish people themselves in conflict.

“As an Irish politician, I was always conscious that Ireland was a small country in the European Union of five million people who could play a constructive role in raising issues that deserve to be raised and in progressing them, but we did not have a major voice in Europe,” Shatter explained. “The current Irish prime minister and foreign minister, I think, perceive themselves as global statesmen striding the universe, whose very utterances everyone is hanging on.

“What we’re seeing in relation to the Irish government arises out of the dreadful atrocities of October 7,” Shatter explained. “The reaction of Sinn Féin and other small left-wing parties in the Irish parliament wasn’t to express sympathy with Israel and criticize Hamas, but it was to attack Israel for defending itself. We’ve had thousands of people marching over the streets of Dublin calling variously for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador; for the closing of the Israeli Embassy; for a Palestinian state from the river to the sea.”

For Shatter, the response of Sinn Féin, traditionally the political front for the IRA, is no surprise, but he also commented on how the Israeli government misunderstood what was necessary to succeed in Ireland.

“It was highly predictable,” he told the Post. “They’ve been running a focused, anti-Israel BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] campaign for the best part of 20 years that has always been better organized than either the Israeli government or the Israeli Embassy in Dublin.”

“I don’t think recent Israeli governments, including the current one, and certainly the foreign affairs section within the Israeli government, have ever fully appreciated and understood the need to properly resource the Israeli Embassy in Dublin so that it can counteract the propaganda run by those who are hostile to Israel, most of whom do not advocate a two-state solution. What they advocate is Israel’s destruction and replacement by a Palestinian state.”

Shatter described the decision to close the embassy as a “fundamental error without much thought and acting perhaps in anger. The Israeli government have handed to Israel’s opponents in Ireland the biggest victory that could possibly be handed to them and have achieved for them an objective they’ve been fighting for 20 years to achieve.”

The Iran problem

Within the context of the Israel-Hamas War is the ever-looming shadow of Iran.

Shatter explained how the Irish government “never criticized Iran for using Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis as their proxies, and extraordinarily decided as a matter of Irish foreign policy in the last 14 to 15 months to deepen its relationship with Iran.”

Three months ago, the Irish reopened their embassy in Tehran; and in July, when Masoud Pezeshkian became the new Iranian president, Higgins, sent what Shatter described as a “groveling congratulatory letter,” praising Iran’s cultural heritage and commitment to peace in the region, and looking forward to working with them to achieving peace.

“While demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and criticizing Israel alone for continuing the conflict, neither Harris nor Martin demand Iran require Hamas to release the hostages, stop firing missiles, and end their armed struggle,” Shatter stated. “Instead, they publicly welcomed Iran’s ambassador to their party conferences last April and excluded and boycotted Israel’s ambassador. Essentially, they implemented within their parties their own version of political BDS.”

But it is a continuation of the current Irish government’s fervent anti-Israel stance that led to this week’s developments.

The war of words between Higgins and Sa’ar continued days after the announcement of the closing of the embassy.

“I think to suggest that because one criticizes Prime Minister Netanyahu, that one is antisemitic is such a gross defamation and slander,” Higgins stated to Irish media on Tuesday. “I have to say that originally when I accepted credentials, I put it down to lack of experience. But then I saw later that it was part of a pattern to damage Ireland.

“Over the years, I think it is the Irish psyche that we understand the words ‘dispossession,’ ‘occupation,’ and so on,” Higgins said. “That’s why we stress the importance of international law... particularly in relation to the rights obligations of those who are in occupation on what is occupied territory.”

Sa’ar responded on X/Twitter with “once an antisemitic liar – always an antisemitic liar.”

The Irish Jewish community has expressed concern about the deterioration of Irish-Israel ties following Israel’s decision, calling on the Irish and Israeli governments to pursue reconciliation and more constructive relations. Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder said that Ireland had not engaged constructively with the Israeli government since the eruption of the multifront war with Hamas and Iranian proxies, instead vilifying and criticizing the Jewish state. The move also affects Israelis currently living in Ireland, who will find themselves without any diplomatic representation.

For Shatter, “within the Irish Jewish community, there’s some understanding of the [Israeli] action taken. They deeply regret it. This isn’t simply about the Irish Jewish community, though. It’s about an embassy in Dublin having an opportunity, with an ambassador present in Dublin, to engage with the wider Irish community, with Irish businesses, with the very few Irish politicians who are supportive of Israel.

“There is a segment of Irish society that’s antisemitic,” Shatter admitted, but “I don’t think any a greater segment than other European countries. But antisemitic rhetoric has started to become more acceptable, just with the word ‘Zionist’ replacing the word ‘Jew.’”

The ICJ issue

Within the wider context of the Israeli decision to close the embassy is also Ireland’s decision last week to announce its support for South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide, requesting the ICJ “reinterpret” the definition of genocide so that it fits with Israeli military action in Gaza.

Ireland previously signaled that it would intervene in the ongoing case, with Martin saying in March that it was for the ICJ to decide whether genocide is being committed. Last month, the Irish government passed a motion that Israel is “perpetrating genocide” on Gaza, appearing to decide the matter for itself.

All of this has clearly left a nasty taste in the mouth of the Israelis, with plenty of reasons for their diplomatic dissatisfaction with recent Irish behavior.

For Shatter, however, one thing stands above all as a paramount priority.

“I think [the Israelis are] in a position now – with the collapse of Hezbollah and events in Syria – to complete a deal which produces the release of all hostages and put Hamas under sufficient pressure to realize and understand it cannot resume governance in Gaza,” he told the Post. “All of this is a lot more important than the utterings of the Irish prime minister or the Irish president.”