From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 26, 2025
In Holocaust day speech, Irish president focuses on ‘horrific loss of life’ in Gaza, sparks protest
Irish President Michael D. Higgins uses his speech at Ireland’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony to discuss the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and praises the “long-overdue ceasefire,” in the Palestinian enclave, leading some to walk out of the room in protest.
Higgins says he believes that the ceasefire and hostage release deal has been welcomed by “those in Israel who mourn their loved ones, those who have been waiting for the release of the hostages,” as well as the “thousands searching for relatives in the rubble” of the Gaza Strip.
Appearing to draw a line between the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and the war in Gaza, which was sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror assault in southern Israel, Higgins says: “When wars and conflicts become accepted or presented as seemingly unending, humanity is a loser.”
“War is not the natural condition of humanity. Cooperation is.”
He says that world leaders should be made “acutely aware” of the “complicit actions of silence or the averted gaze of those who, by their indifference, allowed the Holocaust to be planned, prepared and to occur.”
As everyone knew he would, reprehensible troll-doll made Irish president, Michael Higgins, hijacked a Holocaust memorial event and made it about Gaza, even adding in the debunked Gaza famine blood libel. A blood libel at a Holocaust memorial…
He was begged by the tiny Irish… pic.twitter.com/U2Lc4AnABP
— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) January 26, 2025
Ireland notably maintained an official policy of neutrality throughout the Second World War.
Ireland’s RTE news outlet reports that several protesters stood with their backs facing Higgins throughout his speech, while others left the room in protest of his participation.
Several people, including an Israeli-Irish woman, were forcibly removed from the room as well, the Irish Times reports.
When the plans for Higgins to speak at the ceremony were announced last month, some of Ireland’s Jewish leaders said that he was an “inappropriate” pick for the event, due to his “grave insensitivity to Irish Jews.”
Higgins has repeatedly accused Israel of conflating criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with antisemitism and has rejected accounts from Irish Jews of skyrocketing anti-Jewish sentiment.
Some have accused Higgins of helping fuel antisemitism due to his harsh censure of Israel over the war in Gaza and unwillingness to tackle the issue.
