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Wild claims against Israeli Embassy in Ireland and IDF remain uncorrected
Two recent sets of accusations made against certain elements of the State of Israel by the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, still call for explanation. Far from helping to contribute to any constructive debate about how the State of Israel as a whole is prosecuting its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, these claims remain unfounded and, remarkably, are still floating around in public discourse uncorrected by their originator.
The first incident (covered here by the Times of Israel) happened over a fortnight ago and perhaps attracted the greater interest out of the two stories. Fielding questions from journalists at a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York City on 22 September, Higgins was asked about the apparent leaking of a letter he had written, back in July, to the (then incoming) President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Now, many will focus – not unreasonably – on the letter itself, and will ask why Ireland should be expressing warm sentiments to the new president of a state which (at least through its religious leaders) stands accused of stoking the ongoing fires in the Middle East via its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as part of a putative ongoing campaign to destroy the State of Israel.
However, these kinds of sentiments being perfectly within Ireland’s rights to express, and this kind of letter being standard practice for leaders of countries with whom Ireland shares diplomatic relations (including with previous Iranian leaders), the real concern lies in what happened next. Higgins, addressing quickfire questions about how his letter came to be made public, said this:
You should ask where the criticism came from and how the letter was circulated and by whom and for what purpose… Not at all, of course I know how it became public. It’s for you to find out… I do indeed [know], it was circulated from the Israeli embassy.
When pressed on how he knew that the letter had come into the hands of the Israeli Embassy, Higgins simply said: “I have no idea”. When it was then put to him that the letter was actually first published by the Iranian Embassy to Ireland (on 26 July, in a later-deleted tweet), he quickly changed subject to other matters concerning the UN General Assembly, and said he deemed the matter to be at an end.
The extent of the Israeli Embassy’s supposed involvement in this was nothing like what Higgins suggested. Even the earliest evidence showed that the Embassy did not circulate the letter until 1 August 2024, a few days after the now-deleted tweet from the Iranian Embassy – and between those dates it was otherwise published in a UK Jewish newspaper and on social media, including by Irish politicians who reacted very angrily to the letter.
This rush by Higgins to attribute all this to Israel, with his only stated proof still being “I have no idea”, is quite something – including for having sparked a fact finding exercise by a national security division of Irish police. But instead of squashing it, Higgins instead chose to accuse the press of misreporting his words – he had used the word “circulated”, not “leaked” (which is correct). His Taoiseach, Simon Harris, aimed the same accusation not at the press but at the Israeli Government itself, when neither it nor the Embassy had parsed those words – indeed, the Embassy’s rightly indignant statement did not even once mention these words.
The second incident came about this week. Responding to reports that the peace-keeping UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) find themselves stranded in the most precarious location right by the border with Israel, Higgins said it was “outrageous” that that the IDF “have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending”. He made that comment in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Ireland’s Defense Forces, around 30 of which are in that reportedly stranded UNIFIL unit.
Except, as a UNIFIL spokesperson confirmed on Monday, the IDF asked it to withdraw its personnel from those posts, but it had not threatened them. A once again indignant Israeli Embassy further clarified that no threats were made and its requests were, of course, for the protection and safety of the UN personnel. And according to the Irish Times, UNIFIL has itself said it may indeed need to scale back and withdraw those units if security conditions worsen, as it did in 2006.
Notwithstanding Ireland’s long-held, explicit and well known sympathy for the Palestinian cause (as is its right), these are completely unforced errors by its President – the letter to Iran does not mention Israel and has little if anything directly to do with Israel. And on UNIFIL, while Higgins’ concerns are more than understandable due to the presence of Irish personnel, his outlandish comment, made without evidence and on the eve of the first anniversary of October 7th, appears to be hyperbolic grandstanding, if nothing else.
With all of that in mind, it is quite remarkable that these spurious and, for Israel, damaging accusations – the sort which we expect from regular social media users, not the leaders of advanced Western nations – remain uncorrected.
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