Dublin’s anti-Israel war on history at Herzog Park may end up with Ireland losing

The Herzog family are as close as Israel comes to royalty, and their Irishness was not incidental to their political ascent. Chaim’s father, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the first chief rabbi of Ireland and enjoyed the confidence of Eamon de Valera. He was known as “the Sinn Féin Rebbe” for his support of Irish republicanism, elements of which he helped transmit – both good and bad – to British-run Palestine when he became chief rabbi there in the 1930s.

This was far from the only cross-pollination between Irish and Jewish nationalism, an awkward inheritance for modern Irish republicans whose heroes helped inspire the founding of the very state many of them now feel has no right to exist. In the 1940s, Yitzak Shamir adopted “Michael” as a nom de guerre in honour of Michael Collins, while Avram Stern, founder of the Irgun Zionist militia, translated a 1924 book titled The Victory of Sinn Féin into Hebrew.

Whatever one thinks of Sinn Féin or the Irgun, both of which employed lamentable terrorist tactics, it requires a certain childishness to judge historical actors solely by contemporary sensibilities. Irish republicans happily grant themselves that latitude when discussing their own past, and even the violence of Hamas, yet extend little of it to Israel.

To deny it to Chaim Herzog, who took pride in his Irish roots and lived an unquestionably accomplished life, is particularly small-minded. He served in both the Haganah, the Jewish militia that became the Israel Defence Force, and the British Army. He founded a law firm that became the largest in Israel before entering politics and eventually becoming the country’s president, where he remained a political moderate and consistently advocated for a two state solution.

Only a society allergic to nuance could write off this man, who died in 1997, over the actions of a government he never lived to see. But such distinctions appear to matter little to the foreign-policy hobbyists on Dublin city council, for whom snubbing their Jewish constituents is apparently a price worth paying for an ostentatious – and utterly futile – condemnation of Israel.

It is a cowardly gesture too, because unlike colonial subjects, the dead cannot defend themselves. Chaim Herzog, who famously tore up the Soviet UN resolution declaring “Zionism is racism”, would hardly have taken the calumnies thrown around in Dublin City Hall over the past week without returning fire. His exchange with his detractors would have almost made the whole farrago worthwhile.

It is now left to his son, Isaac Herzog, the current president of Israel, to point out that renaming the park would be “shameful and disgraceful”.

The breadth of Irish opposition, from the government to the Irish Times, shows President Herzog is hardly alone in that view.

The council performed a rapid reverse-ferret on Monday after being warned by the government the move would be illegal without holding a plebiscite, though it appears intent on reviving the idea in the future.

One caller on the RTE Liveline radio programme suggested finding another – that is, more “acceptable” – Jew to name the park after. Should the council succeed, it is Dublin, not Israel, who will be the poorer for it.