FM Sa’ar defends decision to close Dublin embassy, says Irish PM Harris is an antisemite

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar explains his decision to close Israel’s embassy in Ireland, saying that Dublin “encouraged” antisemitism under an antisemitic prime minister.

“There is a difference between criticism,” says Sa’ar in a meeting of his New Hope faction, “and antisemitism based on the delegitimization and dehumanization of Israel and double standards towards Israel as opposed to other countries. This is how Ireland allowed itself to behave towards Israel.”

Sa’ar points out that Ireland is one of the only European countries that has not adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. “Ireland did not bother to promote measures to fight anti-Semitism within the country, on the contrary,” he argues, “they only encouraged it.

The Foreign Minister accuses Ireland of supporting “the politicized proceedings being conducted at the ICC against Israel and its leaders,” and acting to change the definition of genocide to target Israel at the International Court of Justice. He says that Ireland ״worked systematically to damage our relations with the European Union and incentivize it to take up anti-Israel positions and actions.״

Sa’ar points out that Ireland’s “antisemitic Prime Minister Simon Harris” accused Israel in an interview of starving children and killing civilians. “Is Israel starving children? When Jewish children died of starvation in the Holocaust, Ireland was at best neutral in the war against Nazi Germany.”

“Israel will not be a punching bag for every antisemite in the world to beat on,” Sa’ar declares. “Israel will not continue business as usual when that happens.”

Sa’ar says that in addition to opening an embassy in Moldova, Israel will look to open new embassies in the Balkans, Africa and beyond in countries that have requested such a move.