Recognition of a Palestinian state amounted to the “rewarding of a terrorist organisation for committing the single greatest atrocity on the Jewish people since the Shoah, the Holocaust”, and was “an act of pure folly”, the chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland has said.
Maurice Cohen was speaking at the installation of Ireland’s eighth Chief Rabbi, Yoni Wieder, at the Dublin Hebrew Synagogue in Terenure. The large attendance included Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich.
Ireland, Norway and Spain today recognised the Palestinian state, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors from Ireland and Norway.
Mr Cohen also spoke about the growing “scourge of antisemitism” in Ireland. He recalled a personal experience he and his wife Bertha had at a Famine commemoration in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, last weekend, when a Garda offered to accompany them as they passed a group with Palestinian flags. It brought home to him how “Ireland has changed for Jews”, he said.
He emphasised “there are, so far, no physical manifestations against the [Jewish] community or individuals, though threats have been made”.
“The demonisation of our spiritual homeland, Israel, knows no bounds in schools, on campus, in the workplace, in the Dáil and the Senate and, worst of all, in the media,” Mr Cohen said.
