Israel’s ambassador to Dublin has said he does not believe Ireland is politically neutral in the Israel-Hamas conflict and warned of a growing “wave of anti-Semitism” internationally, reports RTE.
Dana Erlich spoke after a screening for reporters at the Israeli embassy of footage of the Oct 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel.
She said the footage, which included the attack on a kibbutz and the Raim music festival, was “historically important”.
Dana Erlich said: “It is the most horrific attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust,” reports RTE.
She said footage from the 43-minute video was captured from cameras of victims, emergency workers and dead Hamas operatives.
Journalists were told that the footage showed the murders and bodies of 138 people, which, according to the embassy, accounted for less than 10% of all those killed on October 7.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said last week that Israel’s response to Hamas attacks had become “something more approaching revenge” rather than self-defence.
Varadkar said calls by opposition politicians, including Sinn Féin, to strip Ms Ehrlich of her diplomatic credentials did not represent “common sense”.
“On the matter of the Israeli ambassador, it’s not the Government’s intention to expel the Israeli ambassador and that is for very good reasons. Even countries at war have ambassadors. We have not expelled the Russian ambassador and I don’t think anyone in the house is as supportive of Ukraine as I’ve been, in meaningful ways, not just in words,” he said.
“We have a situation now where we have about 40 Irish citizens in Gaza, and we want them to be able to leave if they want to leave. And we have an Irish citizen (Emily Hand) who may be held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, and we wanted to get her out. We also, at some point, want to be able to talk about peace and reconciliation and an end to this conflict. And when you expel an ambassador you disempower yourself. You cut off links. You can’t talk anymore. You have to rebuild those links. I can understand it as an emotional reaction, but it’s not a common sense approach in my view, and it’s not the way things get done in international affairs,” he added, reports RTE.
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