Uncategorized
Dublin City Council Withdraws Proposal to Rename Park Honoring Former Israeli President Chaim Herzog
A plaque on a stone reads ‘Herzog Park’ commemorating Chaim Herzog as the Dublin City Council has prepared a motion to rename ‘Herzog Park’ to ‘Hind Rajab Park,’ Nov. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
The city council in Dublin, Ireland on Sunday withdrew plans to discuss a proposal that would change the name of a park honoring former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, after the body faced heavy criticism from government officials in Ireland, the US, and Israel, as well as from members of Ireland’s Jewish community.
The Dublin City Council was set to vote on Monday on a motion to rename Herzog Park in Rathgar, in south Dublin. The park was named after the Belfast-born and Dublin-raised former president of Israel in 1995. Late Sunday, Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare said he proposed to withdraw the motion from Monday’s agenda and recommended that the issue should be referred back to the commemorations and naming committee because correct legislative procedures were not followed. He apologized for “administrative oversight.”
Herzog was the son of the chief rabbi of Ireland and was educated at Wesley College in Dublin. He was Israel’s sixth president, from 1983 to 1993, and died in Tel Aviv in 1997. His older son, Michael, recently ended his term as Israeli ambassador to the US, while his younger son, Isaac, is the current president of Israel.
Herzog Park is located in an area that is the center for Jewish life in Dublin, and it is also close to the only Jewish school in the country, Stratford College. The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland (JRCI) has its home base in Herzog House, which is located next to the park and Jewish school.
In June, a motion was submitted by Sinn Féin councillor Kourtney Kenny to rename the park Hind Rajab Park to commemorate a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped in a car that had allegedly come under fire by Israeli military forces in the Gaza Strip in January 2024 and was later found dead. Israel claimed its military troops were not in the area at the time.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said earlier on Sunday that the motion to rename Herzog Park should be “withdrawn in its entirety and not proceeded with.” He also called the proposal “a denial of our history … and will without any doubt be seen as antisemitic.”
“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,” he explained. “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.” The prime minister added that the “motion must be withdrawn and I will ask Dublin City Council to seriously reflect on the implications of this move.”
Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Simon Harris called the proposal “wrong” and “offensive” in a statement on X. Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder said removing Herzog’s name from the park would be “a shameful erasure of Irish-Jewish history and would send a painful message of isolation to a minority already experiencing rising hostilities.”
The proposal was additionally condemned by Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Helen McEntee; US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, US Sen. Lindsey Graham, Ireland’s former Minister of Justice Alan Shatter, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, JRCI Chairman Maurice Cohen, the European Jewish Congress, and several others. Herzog’s son and Israel’s current president, Isaac Herzog, said renaming the park would be “a shameful and disgraceful move.”
The backlash came amid deteriorating Irish-Israeli relations.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
Uncategorized
Qatari PM Meets Iran’s Larijani in Tehran, Discusses Easing Regional Tensions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met with top Iranian security official Ali Larijani in Tehran and reviewed efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Saturday in a statement.
Uncategorized
Tesla Receives Approval to Test Autonomous Driving in Israel
March 12, 2025, Seattle, Washington, USA: A row of brand-new Tesla Cybertrucks stands in a Tesla Motors Logistics Drop Zone in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Wed., March 12, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The Ministry of Transport announced on Sunday that it has granted Tesla official approval to conduct trials of its autonomous driving system on Israel’s roads. The move comes as part of an effort to examine how the car manufacturer’s advanced technology can be integrated into the local driving environment, with full support from the ministry.
The trials will focus on Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) system, a supervised autonomous driving platform. Under the terms of the approval, a driver must remain present in the vehicle at all times to supervise the system, despite its autonomous capabilities. This ensures safety while allowing the technology to be tested in real-world conditions.
The Ministry of Transport described the approval as a significant step toward advancing vehicle regulation in Israel. Officials said the initiative aims to create a regulatory framework that will allow for the routine, supervised use of autonomous driving systems in the future, safely and efficiently.
Tesla will use the trials to assess how the FSD system interacts with Israel’s road infrastructure, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors. Data collected during the experiment will help refine the system and inform potential regulatory updates to accommodate autonomous vehicles.
The ministry emphasized that the pilot program is limited in scope and strictly monitored. It noted that all necessary safety protocols are in place and that public safety remains the top priority throughout the testing period.
Uncategorized
Reopening of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing Expected Monday, Officials Say
An aid truck moves on a road after entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel said, with preparations underway at the war-ravaged enclave’s main gateway that has been largely shut for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Gazans to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid into the territory. It has been largely shut since May 2024 and under Israeli military control on the Gazan side.
COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees humanitarian coordination, said the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation will be coordinated with Egypt and the European Union.
“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing. The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT said in a statement.
A Palestinian official and a European source close to the EU mission confirmed the details. The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
STRICT SECURITY CHECKS
Israel has said the crossing would open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians who wish to leave the war-ravaged enclave and for those who fled the fighting in the first months of the war to return.
Many of those expected to leave are sick and wounded Gazans in need of medical care abroad. The Palestinian health ministry has said that there are 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
An Israeli defense official said that the crossing can hold between 150-200 people altogether in both directions. There will be more people leaving than returning because patients leave together with escorts, the official added.
“(The Rafah crossing) is the lifeline for us, the patients. We don’t have the resources to be treated in Gaza,” said Moustafa Abdel Hadi, a kidney patient in a central Gaza hospital, awaiting a transplant abroad.
“If the war impacted a healthy person by 1 percent, it has impacted us 200 percent,” he said, sitting as he received dialysis treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. His travel request, he said, has been approved.
Two Egyptian officials said that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross Rafah into Egypt for treatment. In the first few days around 200 people, patients and their family members, will cross daily into Egypt, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.
Lists of Gazans set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
NEXT PHASE OF TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.
But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
On Saturday, Israel launched some of its most intense airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people, in what it said was a response to a Hamas violation of the truce on Friday when militants emerged from a tunnel in Rafah.
The next phases of Trump’s plan for Gaza foresee governance being handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas laying down its weapons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory while an international force keeps the peace and Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the Islamist terrorist group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so.