Simon Harris & Fine Gael’s Vendetta Against Israel

The relationship between Jerusalem and Dublin, certainly in modern times, has been one defined by conflict and controversy. Despite so much in common, Ireland and Israel may as well be oil and water. Since October 7^th, this fracture in relations has only worsened – until eventually, Israel took the decision to formally break off relations in December 2024. This begs the question – how did relations deteriorate to such a historic low-point? Without being the sole culprit, one of the key architects of this deterioration is Simon Harris.

Let’s be honest; Ireland has never had a strongly pro-zionist party, like the OVP in Austria, or the PVV in the Netherlands. However, with figures such as Alan Shatter, Pete Barry, Charlie Flanagan or occasionally Simon Coveney, Fine Gael retained a small element of balance amidst the ever-present anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland.

Under former Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael stooped to new lows – in a desperate scramble for popularity. From his tone-deaf comments on the release of 9-year-old hostage Emily Hand, to his 2024 St Patricks day impression of Yasser Arafat at the White House, Varadkar set a new tone for the centrist party. However, the worst was yet to come. Since assuming the leadership of his party and the country in April 2024, Simon Harris has made demonizing the Jewish State his chief foreign policy aim (and purpose). Prior to becoming leader, Harris had already said that Israel was waging ‘a war of revenge’ and a ‘war against children’ – with negligible concern for Israeli hostages or the right of Israeli people to live in peace.

As leader, he started as he meant to go on. At his first party conference as Leader, the Israeli Ambassador was disinvited while the Iranian ambassador was welcomed with open arms in the same breath. During his speech at this event, he gave the usual lip service (a whole 11 seconds!) to condemning October 7th and calling for the release of the hostages. He then went on to spend almost 2 minutes excoriating Israel (for fighting a war against a jihadist enemy that seeks to wipe it off the map and boasts about its use of civilians as human shields – but never let facts get in the way of narrative). He used the fabrication of a ‘famine’ (despite a constant flow of aid) to play on Irish trauma of the 1840s. He then played ‘tough guy’ and stared down the barrel of the camera as he addressed PM Netanyahu directly (who undoubtedly had better things to do than listen to the latest anti-Israel rant from Ireland) and said he was “repulsed by your actions”. This was received with an enormous standing applause. Lastly, he spouted the usual broken record about the need for a 2-state solution (conveniently, 7 Palestinian rejections of such an idea). Moving beyond mere rhetoric, Harris sought to consolidate Ireland’s outlier status as the most anti–Israel state in the West.

In late May 2024, he had his ridiculous ‘peacemaker’ moment, when he led Ireland’s recognition of a phantom ‘State of Palestine’ – without any defined borders, capital, government or citizens. None of that mattered of course, to many in Ireland he had done ‘the right thing’. It was conveniently ignored that Hamas openly celebrated and thanked him for this action. It of course allowed them to turn to their followers and declare ‘look what we have won for you’. This was not the first time Harris would openly reward terrorism. He sent a direct message to Islamic extremists across the world, that ‘jihadist slaughter works against the cowards of the west’.

His next opportunity to inflame came on June 6th. Right-thinking people will recognize this as D-Day, the anniversary of the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. It provided the launchpad to defeat Nazism and grant western freedoms we feel today. Western leaders recognize this, and so they were in Normandy, commemorating the heroes of 1944. But where was Harris? He was in Dublin, meeting with the ambassador for the Palestinian authority, Jilan Abdulmajid, a woman who has never condemned her administration’s deeply anti-Jewish statements and actions. While Europe’s leaders were commending the defeat of the Nazis of the 1940s, Harris was frolicking with the Nazis of today.

In September, he oversaw the disgraceful reopening of the Irish embassy in Iran, the largest state-sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. This was done rather discreetly, but when called out on it, he defended this decision. This followed President Michael D Higgins’ love letter to the newly elected Iranian President Pezeshkian, in which he gave him his ‘best wishes for your endeavors’ and hailed an ‘ever-deepening dialogue and cooperation between the two nations. This is the same Iran that hangs homosexuals from cranes and gives women 100 lashes for the crime of showing their hair in public. Harris, of course, defended Higgins’ words here also. Bear in mind, this is all from a so-called progressive. The same month, he used an Irish famine commemoration ceremony as a stick with which to beat Israel, again using the complete lie of a famine in Gaza. This was also while ignoring an ACTUAL famine in Sudan. Repeated patterns of paper such as this, are why he is accused of uniquely targeting the Jewish State and her people.

October 2024 brought deeply antisemitic comments from Fine Gael representatives, which went without any punishment from the leadership. Councillor Punam Rane stated (on October 7th no less) that “the entire US economy is ruled by the Jews”. It would take 7 months for the party to make up it’s mind whether her comments were hateful, and if she deserved to be punished.

Fine Gael Member of parliament, Colm Burke, quoted Sigmund Freud discussing the psychology of the “pleasure taken in aggression and destruction”, whilst feeling the need to mention that Freud was a ‘Jewish psychiatrist’. In doing so, he clearly wanted to imply that such feelings of ‘aggression and destruction’ were simply inherent to Jews. He also understood that this was wrong, because he deleted this tweet merely an hour later. Again however, no word from Harris.

There was a ceremony in Dublin on October 7^th 2024 to commemorate and mourn the atrocities committed a year earlier. Unlike many other European leaders who attended similar ceremonies in their respective countries, Harris seemingly couldn’t spare the time. This follows on from the failure of the Irish government to send any representation of the inauguration of the new Chief Rabbi only a few months earlier.

On November 14^th 2024, while on the campaign trail in his native Greystones, he said he believed Israel’s war was a ‘genocide’. This was followed up by Ireland’s cabinet affirming a motion of genocide passed in the parliament and on December 11, Ireland’s intention to join South Africa’s case at the ICJ was announced. Furthermore, Ireland would take the unprecedented step to rewrite international law and dilute the definition of genocide to lynch Israel. This was the last straw for the Israeli MFA, who announced the closure of their embassy in Dublin 4 days later.  This led to a heated exchange between Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar and Harris, after Saar accused Harris of being antisemitic. Harris laughably claimed that he was “pro-international law and pro-human rights” before using the medieval blood libel that Israel was ‘killing children”. As for the law and human rights, he didn’t have any issues rolling out the red carpet for China, welcoming an Egyptian president who seized power in a violent coup, or joining hands in the ICJ with South Africa, a country which has enormous problems with sexual violence, corruption and racism.

During the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel a few months earlier; despite Irish troops being located mere hundreds of meters from Hezbollah rockets being fired at Israel, the only words Harris could muster were condemnations of Israel for responding with strength. Good countries have to endure persistent rocket fire for 11 months, in his eyes. This coming from a nation that refuses to pay for its own defense, and instead outsources Ireland’s security to King Charles and President Trump.

Further demonstrating his moral depravity, Harris felt the need just before Christmas 2024 to inform the public of a phone call with Mahmoud Abbas (PA President), to “express the solidarity and unbreakable support of the people of Ireland to the people of Palestine”. His new great foreign policy ally has said that “Hitler did not kill Jews for being Jews, but for their role in society” and that Vladimir Putin is a “dear friend of the Palestinians”, while his government financially incentivizes terror through its ‘Pay for Slay’ program.

More recently, Harris was delighted to cheerlead the first ‘EU-Palestine political dialogue’, a meeting between EU foreign ministers and Mohammed Mustafa of the PA, where an eye-watering €1.6 Bn was pledged to the PA, which it is safe to assume will go to noble causes like school textbooks that glorify ‘martyrs of the Intifada’.

The most recent and particularly grotesque development came at the ‘European People’s Party’s Congress in Valencia only a few days ago. There, Fine Gael delegates refused to vote for a motion condemning Hamas’ October 7th attack and calling for the release of the remaining hostages. One would think this might be the easiest ‘tap-in’ vote possible, but no, not for Simon Harris’ Fine Gael. Subsequently, the party came out to defend their vote by saying: we abstained after our amendments were declined. In other words, we didn’t get our way and calling for the release of innocent Israeli hostages is too much for us to stomach.

Undoubtedly, the coming weeks, months, even years, will bring more lows and damage to Ireland’s international standing. Across Western capitals, Ireland’s vitriolic stance towards Israel – to an obsessive level – is the stuff of infamy. Harris can, and will, take his share of the credit. His party has gone from being a party of diplomacy and democratic values, to one of Islamist-pandering, to a party whose foreign policy is indistinguishable from that of Sinn Féin. What started out as a short-sighted pitch for popularity with young radicals has now turned into the full embrace of Palestinian propaganda, and there is no knowing where this will end up. One thing is for sure however, Fine Gael is not the party it once was and Harris’s vendetta against the sole democracy in the Middle East is to blame.

—

By Jamie O’Mahony & Daniel Epstein–O’Dowd