RSS
Irish Official Apologizes After Claiming Jews, Israel Control US Economy; Jewish Leaders Demand Action
A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
An Irish official has apologized after receiving backlash for claiming that Jews and Israel control the US economy and arguing that is why Washington, DC does not oppose Israel’s war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Dublin City Councilor Punam Rane made the remarks during a council meeting on Monday evening while speaking about the war in Gaza.
“America should have taken a stance, but how many of you know the entire US economy today is ruled by the Jews, by Israel, they will never be able to take a stance,” the Fine Gael party councilor said.
“It will cripple the whole US economy if they take a stance, and therefore they’re afraid of taking a stance,” Rane added. “That’ll never happen unless and until the global powers that are emerging take a stance themselves and make the US take a stance, and that’s what’s happening.”
FG Dublin City Clr Punam Rane last night in a Council meeting discussing a boycott israel Bill asserted the US economy is “ controlled by the Jews & Israel”.Representing Kimmage/ Rathmines she canvassed Jewish voters during local elections. Today’s apology deserves no credibility pic.twitter.com/2XjSr4Leem
— Alan Shatter (@Alan__Shatter) October 8, 2024
The council was debating a motion demanding that the Irish government enact the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban trade between Ireland and Israeli settlements.
After receiving backlash from Jewish groups and others, Rane apologized on Tuesday in a post on X/Twitter.
“I completely withdraw my comments made at last night’s city council meeting in relation to a motion on the Occupied Territories Bill. It was wrong and I fully apologize for it,” Rane wrote.
I completely withdraw my comments made at last night’s city council meeting in relation to a motion on the Occupied Territories Bill. It was wrong and I fully apologise for it.
— Cllr. Punam Rane-Fine Gael (@PunamRaneFG) October 8, 2024
During Monday’s meeting, Conor Reddy, another councilor, asked the mayor to request that Rane “clarify her remarks on Jews controlling the American economy” before claiming that Zionism is distinct from Judaism.
“That’s tremendously unhelpful; we’re all here in solidarity with Palestine,” Reddy said. “To equate Judaism and Zionism is a complete fallacy. It’s wrong, and I think we all stand against antisemitism and it would be helpful if she could withdraw that particular use of words.”
Rane then attempted to clarify her comments and said the US economy was controlled by Israelis, not Jews.
“I didn’t actually mean a particular community,” she said. “But I’m just saying, today the US economy is ruled by the Israelis. It’s not wrong; they have worked hard for it.”
Jewish groups were quick to chide Rane for her comments.
“I unequivocally condemn the vile use of antisemitic rhetoric by Dublin official Punam Rae,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement. “Although she subsequently apologized, her blatant scapegoating of Jews warrants a strong response by Fine Gael, her political party.”
Lauder called on Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris to “make clear that there is no place for antisemitism in Ireland” and on US President Joe Biden to raise “the urgent crisis of antisemitism facing Jews worldwide, including for Irish Jews,” when he meets with Harris.
Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, also blasted Rane’s comments.
“The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland is appalled by the remarks,” Cohen said. “Her subsequent apology is not accepted, and Fine Gael should consider whether she ought to be removed from the party. The Jewish community is also appalled by the fact that these remarks coincided with a remembrance ceremony held in Terenure Synagogue for the 1,200 slaughtered on [Oct. 7 of last year by Hamas]. Comments like this have led to Ireland being labeled as the most antisemitic country in Europe.”
Ireland has been among the most vocal critics of Israel since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza. The terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted over 250 hostages in their rampage, the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities.
Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of the Hamas onslaught, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense.
Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview earlier this year that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”
Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state in May, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.”
Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned that Ireland’s hostility toward the Jewish state was sending the wrong message about Ireland as a tech hub and worrying Israeli investors in the Irish IT services sector.
The post Irish Official Apologizes After Claiming Jews, Israel Control US Economy; Jewish Leaders Demand Action first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
RSS
Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
RSS
Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.