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PRESIDENT MICHAEL D HIGGINS has said his condemnation of antisemitism is “clear” and has rejected a call from the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Ireland to cancel an address he is set to deliver on Holocaust Memorial Day.
In an interview with the Sunday Independent, outgoing Israeli ambassador Dana Erlich claimed that the Jewish community has “concerns” about President Higgins delivering a keynote address to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration.
The event will take place in the Mansion House on 26 January.
Erlich claimed that the Jewish community has called for President Higgins to “reconsider” delivering this speech and added: “If the Jewish community says that they are bothered and concerned by it, I would hope that he and the organisers will listen to them.”
File image of Dana Erlich Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
She further accused President Higgins of “helping the spread of disinformation and incitement against Israel”.
In the Sunday Independent article, Erlich said she will remain as ambassador to Ireland “remotely” until the summer and then move to a “posting in Slovakia”.
In a statement to The Journal, a spokesperson for President Higgins said that next weekend’s event is an “important, solemn and public occasion commemorating a genocide which we must never forget and from which we must learn”.
President Higgins received an invitation from Holocaust Education Ireland to address the event – it will be the seventh time that President Higgins has accepted an invitation and spoken at this event.
The spokesperson for President Higgins added that all of his statements “through this work in politics and as President will show that he has again and again strongly condemned antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism”.
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“Evidence of this is clear on the public record,” added that spokesperson.
“Included in the President’s statements is, for example, the clear suggestion that any targeting of Jewish or Israeli people in Ireland is completely wrong and should be addressed immediately by the State and non-State actors.”
The spokesperson pointed to remarks made by President Higgins in Manchester last year, when he remarked: “The Irish Jewish community must not be dragged into being asked: ‘whose side are you on?’… And I think that’s a very very unfair burden to put on the Jewish community.”
The spokesperson added that President Higgins has a “long and valued relationship with the Jewish community”.
“The President has written of how thirty years ago, when serving as a Government Minister, he traveled to Cork to meet with the former Lord Mayor of Cork, Gerald Goldberg, whose family were among those Jewish families forced to leave Limerick during the 1900s,” said the President’s spokesperson.
“During this meeting, they discussed the history of antisemitism in Ireland and, as someone who was born in Limerick, the President as a member of Government apologised for all that the families of the Jewish community had suffered.”
The spokesperson added that President Higgins “hopes” that the ceasefire which came into force today “can be the beginning of a meaningful discussion and sustained diplomatic initiative from the international community to bring a lasting peace and security to Israel, Palestine and the greater region”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week In Politics, Fine Gael’s Neale Richmond said it’s important for President Higgins to address the event and that he “sends out a clear message that the legacy of the Holocaust will never be repeated and that those from a Jewish background in Ireland are welcome and are safe here and this is their home.”
Tánaiste Micheál Martin reiterated this point today, telling reporters at the Fianna Fáil special Ard Fheis that it is right that President Higgins address the event.
“I think the presidency is the highest office in the land and I think our president is a very wise, well-rounded individual,” he said.
“He has studied politics and history, and I think he is in a position to deliver an appropriate and well-balanced contribution to that event.
“I think he’s been consistent throughout his life in respect of being against antisemitism and being pro-tolerance and inclusivity, and so I do think it’s appropriate, as our head of state, that he would deliver that, particularly in the context of the world that we are in today.”
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