Eight Independent and two People Before Profit councillors on Dublin City Council have “absolutely” rejected any suggestion that a proposal to rename Herzog Park was anti-Semitic.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the councillors said the campaign to rename the park was “driven by campaigners and the enormous public revulsion at what has been done to the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza”.
The small park in Rathgar, south Dublin, became the focus of international attention late last year over a plan to remove the name of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog.
The park was named in 1995 in honour of Belfast-born Herzog, Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, who spent his early childhood in Dublin when his father was chief rabbi of Ireland. His son, Yitzhak Herzog, is the current president of Israel.
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Ultimately, the proposal was removed from the council agenda in December on the grounds that the correct procedures for changing a placename had not been followed.
At this month’s council meeting on April 13th, Lord Mayor of Dublin and Fine Gael councillor Ray McAdam apologised to the Jewish community of Dublin and residents of Rathgar for “the flawed manner and administrative failures” that happened regarding the process.
In the statement on Tuesday, the 10 councillors said the apology “should not be used to rewrite the substance of the issue”.
They said: “The flawed process is one matter, the political principle is another. We continue to believe that Herzog’s name should be removed from this park, and that Dublin’s placenames should reflect the democratic values, anti-racist traditions and international solidarity of the people of this city.”
The councillors said their objection “was always to honouring Chaim Herzog as a public figure”.
The statement continued: “Public spaces in our city should not commemorate people associated with the violent dispossession and slaughter of Palestinians and the building and defence of the Zionist state. That is a political and moral judgment, not a religious prejudice.”
The councillors said “real anti-Semitism exists” and “must be challenged head-on wherever it appears, particularly where it comes from the far right and from racist conspiracy politics”.
The statement was signed by People Before Profit councillors Conor Reddy and Hazel De Nortúin, and Independent councillors Cieran Perry, Nial Ring, Mannix Flynn, Vincent Jackson, Pat Dunne, John Lyons, Christy Burke and Kevin Breen.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was among a number of public figures who opposed the denaming proposal. “The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as anti-Semitic,” he said.
Others who criticised the council’s proposal included Tánaiste Simon Harris, the office of the Israeli president and Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder.
