Herzog Park Hangs On

The suspension of plans to rename Dublin’s Herzog Park comes as a relief — and a reminder that the scourge of antisemitism in Ireland is a pressing problem. The volte-face came on Sunday night, hours before Dublin City Council appeared set to vote to erase the name of Herzog from the Emerald Isle. The chief executive of the council, Richard Shakespeare, blames an “administrative oversight.” Dublin’s Lord Mayor says the council “completely messed up.”That’s putting it mildly — and all too benignly. The fate of Herzog Park became an international matter over the weekend after these pages noted the effort afoot to change the name of the park. The green space is near Dublin’s only Jewish school and is in a neighborhood, Rathgar, rich in Jewish history. It is named after Chaim Herzog, an Irish Jew whose father was Ireland’s chief rabbi. Herzog, a boxing champion, became Israel’s sixth president.Chaim Herzog, who fought the Nazis when Ireland was neutral during the Holocaust and who spoke fluent Irish to his dying day, was also the father of Israel’s current president, Isaac Herzog. Such is the anti-Israel — call it antisemitic — fervor in Ireland, though, that history is now to be obliterated rather than celebrated. The country has been seized by a pro-Palestinian mania that Irish Jews are contemplating “extinction” level conditions.So outrageous was the nixing of the name that even Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheál Martin, declared that Jews can be proud of “actual participation in the Irish War of Independence.” He adds that the renaming would “erase the distinctive and rich contribution to Irish life of the Jewish community … the proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as antisemitic.” And not only seen that way. The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland declared that the proposal was “already perceived by our community as a gross act of antisemitism.” Also weighing in was President Herzog, who called the effort to rename the park “shameful and disgraceful.” The president’s office also reposted a statement on X from an Israeli minister, Amichai Chikli, that “Chaim Herzog was not only the President of Israel. He was Ireland’s son.”Last year, Israel closed its embassy at Dublin on account of what the Jewish state’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, called Ireland’s “extreme anti-Israel policies.” Over the weekend Mr. Saar reflected that ”there is no decision more accurate and just than my decision to close our embassy.” He was seconded by Senator Lindsey Graham, who decried “a complete turning upside down of history when it comes to the Jewish people and the state of Israel.”One Irish parliamentarian, Thomas Byrne, posted to X over the weekend that in meeting with Ireland’s Jewish community, which numbers some 3,000 souls, he has been “struck by the pride in the community’s Irishness, and their joy to live in Ireland — just like any of us.” As these pages have noted, the children of Éireann and of Zion have much in common. Honoring the Herzogs could help Ireland alter its perilous course.

Herzog Park Hangs On

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