There had been high hopes that Dublin park, disgracefully named after Israeli war criminal Chaim Herzog, was set to be renamed. However, a last minute u-turn almost certainly due to political manoeuvring behind the scenes following loud interventions from the Irish government has likely scotched the change.
Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare released the following statement on the evening of Sunday November 30:
The authority to change a placename is contained within Part 8 of the Local Government Act 2001. The process involves the adoption by resolution of a proposal to substitute a new placename by the elected members, the holding of a public consultation and a secret ballot of qualified electors should a proposal be approved. While the provisions of the Act were commenced in 2019, the regulations required to govern the process for a secret ballot are not yet in place. The Report to the elected members does not take account of the correct statutory procedure and is missing information for a valid resolution to be adopted.
Therefore, in the circumstances I am proposing to withdraw the report from the Agenda with a recommendation that the matter be referred back to the Commemorations and Naming Committee for consideration of the statutory procedure. On behalf of the Executive of the City Council, I wish to apologise for this administrative oversight. A detailed review of the administrative mis-steps will now be undertaken and a report furnished to the Lord Mayor and Councillors.
Translated to English, this gobbledegook means ‘we desperately trawled through the report looking for any little detail we could twist into some arcane procedural violation, thus saving us a backlash from our US and Israeli overlords.’
Paul Murphy of People Before Profit was certainly of that opinion, saying on social media:
What a joke. So much for local democracy. Once Micheál Martin jumps for his US masters, then the Council executive jumps too. No coincidence that this is happening at the same time as the Mail on Sunday is reporting that the Occupied Territories Bill will be shelved.
Dublin park fiasco: Irish government slithers to escape challenging so-called ‘Israel’
The Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) is legislation intended to decrease Ireland’s trade with illegal settlements. It has gone through a torturous process already, all for a weak bill that falls far short of what should be instituted – total cessation of all trade with the Zionist entity. There appear to be continued attempts in the Irish government to delay and water down the bill. Those running the country have been heavily complicit in the terror regime’s genocide by allowing use of Shannon airport for arms shipments, and importing vast quantities of Israeli products.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin had piled additional pressure on the council with antisemitic nonsense. As has been said many times before, conflating Jewish people in general with a land theft project carrying out a holocaust is obscenely slanderous to the many who oppose so-called Israel’s actions. Nonetheless, Martin proceeded:
The proposal to rename Herzog Park should be withdrawn in its entirety and not proceeded with.
The proposal would erase the distinctive and rich contribution to Irish life of the Jewish community over many decades, including actual participation in the Irish War of Independence and the emerging State.
The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as antisemitic.
It is overtly divisive and wrong. Our Irish Jewish community’s contribution to our country’s evolution in its many forms should always be cherished and generously acknowledged.
This motion must be withdrawn and I ask all on Dublin City Council to seriously reflect on the implications of this move.
Martin is correct to suggest the name removal would be seen as antisemitic – the question is by who, and whether they’re arguing in anything approaching good faith. Needless to say, the Office of the President of Israel opposes renaming the Dublin park. They said:
Removing the Herzog name, if it happens, would be a shameful and disgraceful move.
Herzog family is a chain of criminality
Interestingly, the current occupant of the above role is the vile spawn of Chaim Herzog himself. His son Isaac was one of the most prominent proponents of mass extermination in Gaza, saying in the early phase of Israel’s genocide:
It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved—it’s not true.
Incitement to genocide is a crime under the Genocide Convention. This has not stopped fellow genocidaire British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rolling out the red carpet for this advocate of mass slaughter. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as father Chaim was a key figure in the vast multitude of crimes that have led to the abomination that is the present day pseudo-state incorrectly called ‘Israel’.
Herzog senior served in the Zionist Haganah paramilitary group, which carried out atrocities in the years leading up to the Nakba, and during the mass ethnic cleansing process itself. Following this, he is described as having “built and led the establishment of IDF Military intelligence”. In 1967 he became military governor of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and was integral in the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem’s Mughrabi Quarter, calling the area a “toilet” that the Zionists “decided to remove”. The ethno-supremacist land thief rejoiced at the possibility of a Greater Israel, raving after the so-called Six Day War that the:
…Israel Defence Forces [sic] smashed [the Arab armies’] defences and liberated the West Bank up to the Jordan. Bethel, Nablus, Givon, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Shilom, the Etzion block. It was as if a page had been taken out of the Bible and we were privileged to live to see it.
He finally went on to become the sixth president of the Zionist entity. While in the role he:
…commuted the prison sentences of two members of the Jewish terrorist underground who had been convicted of plotting to blow up one of Islam’s holiest shrines…
The terrorists had been aiming to destroy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Zionism is a fundamentally racist project, so the type of character who can occupy so many senior roles within such a system can logically only ever be one of enormous disrepute.
Belfast also venerates Zionist ethnic cleanser
Aside from Dublin, Herzog has also been celebrated in Belfast, which suffers the misfortune of being his city of birth. A display in an exhibition area of Belfast City Hall venerates the racist zealot to this day. Residents of North Belfast have thankfully been spared the indignity of visible association with him, after a plaque in Cliftonpark Avenue was taken down by the council in 2014 following regular attacks. This is a useful prompt for any civically minded citizens in Dublin examining what course of action might be viable should the renaming definitively fail.
Where the Belfast plaque has gone is anyone’s guess, which is a shame, though not for the kind of reasons Taoiseach Martin has raised for the Dublin case. He was on the right track when he decried erasure, however; hiding these artefacts away entirely is a mistake, when instead they should be in a museum to acknowledge the error of their original purpose. Just as the statue of Edward Colston lies amidst a display indicating the reasons for its demise, so too should this be the fate of Dublin’s Chaim Herzog plaque. Stick it in a museum, along with an apology for ever having it on a park in the first place. Alongside it can be a new plaque, listing all the crimes of the Zionist reprobate, though it’ll need a lot of aluminium and a large viewing area to fit all of them in.
The BBC report that:
The Group Leaders of Dublin City Council will meet at 13.00 local time on Monday to discuss the matter and [Lord Mayor Ray] McAdam will address the issue during the evening’s council meeting.
A “final decision” will be made during the meeting on whether Monday’s vote will take place, the lord mayor said.
Featured image via Unsplash/Valerie
This post was originally published on Canary.