The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, the country’s EJC affiliate has condemned a series of tweets by Réada Cronin, a newly elected member of the Dáil Éireann (TD), Ireland’s lower house.
Cronin was recently elected for the Kildare North constituency for the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party. One of her tweets, posted in 2014 linked Israel to Nazism. Another implied that the Mossad had ‘sinister interference’ in the UK general election and that that ‘the Mossad’s actions impacted Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign’.Speaking in Dublin, Sinn Fein director of elections Pearse Doherty declared that the comments by Cronin were “not in keeping with Sinn Féin’s policies”.
In a statement, Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, declared that “the various Tweets from Sinn Féin TD Réada Cronin are inaccurate, antisemitic and racist. We note the comments made today by Pierce Doherty . However it is disappointing that her offensive comments have neither been criticised nor condemned by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald”,
“Unfortunately too many people in Ireland have an opinion on everything, whether or not they have any knowledge of the particular subject on which they are commenting. Due to this lack of knowledge the term Nazism is bandied around in Ireland without knowing that it was, amongst other things, the premeditated, industrialised slaughter of six million Jews and many others, that didn’t suit the Nazi Regime,” Cohen added.
“A little education on what constitutes antisemitism would go a long way to correcting this problem. To that end we would urge Sinn Féin and the other political parties to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of Antisemitism. The definition has been adopted by most countries in Europe and as Ireland is already a signatory to the IHRA we have de facto accepted it. It is now up to our politicians to adhere to it,” Cohen concluded.
Sinn Féin attracted the largest number of first preference votes at the 2020 Irish General election, upsetting the country’s longstanding Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil duopoly. Cronin later apologised for the comments, adding that “a lot of them pre-dated her political career”.She has since put her Twitter account on private.
