Renaming a Dublin park has put the spotlight on antisemitism

A proposal to “de-name” a Dublin park honouring Israel’s sixth President, Chaim Herzog, has been withdrawn from Dublin City Council’s agenda—for now. The damage done and the hurt caused, however, will not be easily erased, writes Dick Roche.

EUalive’s columnist Dick Roche is a former Irish Minister of State for European Affairs. His columns can be found here.

On 26 January 2023, President Isaac Herzog addressed the European Parliament to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The son of an Irish-born father and grandson of Ireland’s first Chief Rabbi, President Herzog spoke movingly of the need to combat antisemitism, protect Jewish communities and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

He described antisemitism as “an auto-immune disease” that made Europe attack its own DNA, erasing a shared history stretching back millennia. He recalled how, after the Second World War, his grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, crossed a devastated continent searching for Jewish survivors.

President Herzog did not mention that Rabbi Herzog had been a fluent Irish speaker, a supporter of the Irish republican cause, a friend of Éamon de Valera, and—influential in ensuring the 1937 Irish Constitution referenced Ireland’s Jewish community.

He told the Parliament how his father, Chaim Herzog—born in Belfast in 1918 and raised in Dublin—had landed at Normandy as a British Army officer, helped liberate Bergen-Belsen, and later became the sixth President of Israel.

Few who heard that speech could have imagined that, less than three years later, President Herzog would feel compelled to intervene in a Dublin City Council debate.

The item that provoked his criticism—and that of many others—was a proposal by Dublin City Council’s Commemorations and Naming Committee to strip the name “Herzog Park” from a Rathgar amenity (formerly Orwell Quarry Park), renamed in 1995 to honour Chaim Herzog.

For Ireland’s small and dwindling Jewish community, the Council proposal is particularly painful. The park is in a part of Dublin where many of Dublin’s Jewish community live. It is beside schools attended by Jewish children. Ireland’s Chief Rabbi, Yoni Wieder, wrote in The Irish Times that it is “filled with memory, identity and belonging” for local families. Removing the name, he said, would “erase a central piece of Irish-Jewish history” and send a message of isolation.

Alan Shatter, a prominent Jewish Irish former Minister for Justice, condemned the move as an attempt to “erase Jewish Irish history.” Those sentiments have been widely echoed.

President Herzog called any removal of his father’s name “shameful and disgraceful,” expressing hope that a figure who helped build Israel-Ireland relations and fought antisemitism and tyranny would still receive the respect he deserves. His brother, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, wrote on X that it was sad to see one of Ireland’s prominent Jewish figures turned “from a source of pride for Dublin to a source of denial,” and described Ireland as becoming a “scene of raging anti-Semitism.”

The proposal has also drawn sharp criticism in the United States, where Ireland’s reputation has taken a battering of late. Senator Lindsey Graham called modern Ireland “a cesspool of antisemitism.” Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel, described the de-naming as “an incredible insult” to a family with deep Irish roots and urged decent Irish people to stop this “madness.”

Belatedly, Irish political leaders weighed in. The Taoiseach called the proposal “divisive and wrong,” warning it would erase the rich contribution of Jewish communities to Irish life, including their role in the War of Independence. The Minister for Foreign Affairs insisted it had “nothing to do” with Israeli actions in Gaza or the West Bank and had no place in an inclusive republic.

On Sunday, a classic “Irish solution” emerged. With councillors due to vote in favour of the proposal on Monday, the Council’s Chief Executive, Richard Shakespeare, announced he was withdrawing the motion due to an “administrative oversight”: new procedures introduced in 2001 requiring a secret ballot had not been implemented.

The proposal’s withdrawal may result in the ‘de-naming’ not being moved forward – for the moment. That, however, will not erase either the damage that has done to Ireland’s international reputation or, more importantly, the hurt that it has caused.

There is nothing progressive about antisemitism.

Caption: Israeli President Isaac Herzog attends an official ceremony, welcomed by Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics (not pictured), in Riga, Latvia, 5 August 2025. EPA/TOMS KALNINS