Dublin councillors halted plans to rename a park currently honouring a past Israeli president that had drawn criticism from the Irish and Israeli governments.
The park, located near Dublin’s sole Jewish school, is named after Ireland-born Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth president.
Ireland, home to about 3,000 Jewish people, has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and the move to rename “Herzog Park” followed a campaign by anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian activists, but official council documents did not disclose a reason for the proposal.
The proposal had been scheduled for a city council vote in the near future.
But after it drew accusations of antisemitism, Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare announced he was “proposing to withdraw the report from the Agenda,” citing procedural reasons.
In a statement, Shakespeare said he was referring the matter back to the council committee responsible, without touching on the debate sparked by the renaming plan.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin had argued in a statement on X that the proposal “should be withdrawn in its entirety.
“The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as antisemitic,” Martin said, calling it “overtly divisive and wrong.”
Herzog, who died in 1997, was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland and grew up in Dublin before serving as Israeli president between 1983 and 1993. His father was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland after it gained independence from Britain in 1922, while his son, Isaac Herzog, is the current Israeli president.
