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Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Blasts President for Conduct, Anti-Israel Tirade During National Holocaust Memorial
Irish President Michael D. Higgins opening the national Plaoghing Championship 2024 in Ratheniska, Co. Laois, Ireland, Sept. 17, 2024. Photo: Karlis Dzjamko/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Irish Jews were forcibly removed from a Holocaust commemoration on Monday after silently protesting the country’s president for politicizing the event by launching a tirade against Israel’s war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — a move the country’s chief rabbi later told The Algemeiner was “a disgrace.”
Irish President Michael D. Higgins’s remarks at the National Holocaust Memorial in Dublin appeared to draw parallels between Israel’s war in Gaza and the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust and were met with immediate backlash.
Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder lambasted Higgins for using the memorial to single out Israel.
“Ireland’s National Holocaust Memorial ought to be a time to remember those who suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. It is deeply disheartening that President Higgins opted to politicize it by singling out this war and taking issue with Israel’s response to the atrocities of Oct. 7,” Wieder told The Algemeiner, referring to Hamas’s 2023 invasion of southern Israel. The brutal onslaught, which started the Gaza war, was the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Tensions flared on Monday when several attendees protested Higgins’s speech by either walking out or turning their backs on him, only to be removed by security. In one instance a woman was seen being dragged out of the event.
It’s disturbing that the president of Ireland, @PresidentIRL who already has a documented history of antisemitic comments, was invited to address a Holocaust memorial event at all. Despite the Jewish community in Ireland specifically requesting that he not do so, he went ahead… pic.twitter.com/j9A95jHvcK
— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) January 26, 2025
Wieder condemned the response, saying, “It’s no surprise that some in attendance chose to show their disagreement with his speech. They did so in silence, and they were not disrupting the event. The fact that anyone was manhandled and dragged out of the room by force is a disgrace. It was completely unjustified.”
Representatives of the Irish Jewish community had previously expressed their opposition to the decision for Higgins to deliver the main address at the Holocaust Day ceremony, which also coincided with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous of all the Nazi concentration camps.
Wieder contrasted the removal of the protesters with Dublin’s permissiveness toward openly hostile demonstrations against Israel: “Masked protesters parade Hamas and Hezbollah flags freely in the streets of Dublin and call for Tel Aviv to be bombed, as happened this weekend. It’s a glaring, embarrassing contradiction.”
Higgins’s remarks, which included calls for an end to civilian casualties in Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid, were criticized for equating Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis with Israel’s military efforts to dismantle the terror organization.
“The grief caused to families by the horrific acts of Oct. 7, and the response to them, is unimaginable. The loss of civilian lives, the displacement of people, the destruction of homes and institutions — all are beyond comprehension,” he said.
The Irish president went on to to say that the “long overdue ceasefire” that came into effect last week has been welcomed by “those in Israel who mourn their loved ones, those who have been waiting for the release of the hostages,” as well as the “thousands searching for relatives in the rubble” of Gaza.
Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, denounced Higgins’s comments as a “despicable provocation,” accusing him of using International Holocaust Remembrance Day to “echo Hamas’s antisemitic propaganda, leading Jews, descendants of Holocaust survivors, to walk out of the event.”
Higgins had “failed to rise above himself and resorted to cheap and despicable provocation,” Sa’ar wrote on X.
Referencing Ireland’s sordid history during the Holocaust, Sa’ar said world leaders should be made “acutely aware” of the “complicit actions of silence or the averted gaze of those who, by their indifference, allowed the Holocaust to be planned, prepared and to occur.”
This incident came against a backdrop of strained Irish-Israeli relations, exacerbated by Ireland’s decision last year to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state as a state as well as join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its support for redefining genocide in order to secure a conviction against Jerusalem. The move, along with Higgins’s consistent criticism of Israeli policies, has solidified Ireland’s reputation as one of the most openly anti-Israel countries in Europe.
Last month, Israel announced it was shuttering its embassy in Dublin, accusing the Irish government of undermining Israel at international forums and promoting “extreme anti-Israel policies.”
Ireland has “crossed all the red lines,” Sa’ar told reporters at the time, calling the Irish government’s actions “unilateral hostility and persecution” rather than mere criticism.
The announcement came after then-Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing the country of “the starvation of children” and “the killing of civilians” — remarks that Sa’ar slammed as “antisemitic” and historically insensitive. Sa’ar also noted how “when Jewish children died of starvation in the Holocaust, Ireland was at best neutral in the war against Nazi Germany.”
Those comments followed the Irish parliament in November passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.”
In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time of Ireland’s recognition of “Palestine” that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
More recently, Harris in October called on the European Union to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed legislation banning the activities in the country of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, because of its ties to Hamas.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, recently released a report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history. The findings showed that the textbooks help foster antisemitism by downplaying the Holocaust, portraying Judaism as a violent religion, and distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to make Israel out to be a villain.
In one example uncovered by Impact-se, a history textbook for eleventh graders describes Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Poland where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II, as a “prisoner of war camp” rather than an “extermination,” “concentration,” or “death camp.” In other textbooks — including Inspire – Wisdom of the World, a religious studies book distributed to students as young as 12 years old — Judaism is described as a war mongering religion which “believes that violence and war are sometimes necessary to promote justice.”
Irish curricula is perhaps most aggressive in discussing Israel and the Palestinians, according to Impact-se. Citing Inspire again, the report revealed that the textbook’s authors chose to propagate the misleading claim that Jesus Christ lived in “Palestine,” a piece of disinformation that has been trafficked by anti-Zionist activists both to diminish Jesus’s Jewish heritage and deny the existence of a Jewish state in antiquity.
“Historical references to Jesus living in ‘Palestine’ without appropriate context can contribute to narratives that challenge Israel’s legitimacy and undermine the Jewish historical connection to the land,” wrote Impact-se, which also noted that a textbook for younger children on the story of Jesus included a comic strip with the words, “Some people did not like Jesus.” The people shown in the comic are visibly Jewish, wearing religious clothing such as a kippah.
“This portrayal aligns with antisemitic stereotypes that have wrongly blamed Jews collectively for the death of Jesus,” the group stated.
In recent weeks, the Catholic religious establishment in Ireland has come under scrutiny for targeting Israel. In a New Year’s message by Archbishop Eamon Martin, the most senior Catholic figure in Ireland lambasted Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “merciless” and a “disproportionate” response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
Martin was not the first prominent Irish cleric to use his platform to castigate Israel in recent days.
In November, Reverend Canon David Oxley came under fire for delivering an antisemitic memorial sermon in which he suggested that Israelis and Jews see themselves as a “master race” that justifies “eliminating” other groups “because they don’t count.”
Oxley delivered the sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin during a Remembrance Sunday service attended by Irish Higgins and other high-ranking dignitaries.
Regarding Higgins’s latest address, Wieder accused the president of “neglecting even to acknowledge the scourge of contemporary antisemitism in Ireland, let alone do anything to address it.”
“It is so important that Irish politicians and public figures come together to honor the memory of victims of the Holocaust. Yet the awful irony is that many of them are turning a blind eye to a troubling increase in anti-Jewish hatred in Ireland today.”
The post Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Blasts President for Conduct, Anti-Israel Tirade During National Holocaust Memorial first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Data: Nearly 90 Percent of Gaza Aid ‘Intercepted’ Before Reaching Intended Recipients
Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients, newly released data from the United Nations shows, fueling growing concerns among Israeli officials and international observers about systemic aid diversion by armed groups in the enclave.
According to figures tracking humanitarian assistance for Gaza from May 19 to Aug. 1 of this year, out of the 2,010 UN trucks (carrying 27,434 tons of aid) collected from any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter, only 260 trucks (4,111 tons) reached their intended destination. That equates to a staggering 87 percent of all trucks and 85 percent of all tonnage of aid being stolen and not getting into the hands of civilians at the intended destination.
The UN’s own data, posted on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) as part of the “UN2720 Monitoring & Tracking Dashboard,” reveals that almost all the aid — 1,753 trucks (23,353 tons) — has been “intercepted, either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors” while being transported inside Gaza over the past few months.
No breakdown is provided of how much aid has been seized by armed groups versus civilians.
The data also shows that much of the UN aid offloaded at any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter has not been collected to enter the war-torn enclave during this period. Out of 40,012 tons of aid (2,134 trucks) being delivered to the crossings, just 27,434 tons (2010 trucks) have been picked up. It’s unclear what exactly led to this discrepancy, with issues such as poor internal coordination and security concerns potentially delaying aid shipments.
The UN2720 mechanism, created earlier this year, was intended to boost transparency by verifying and tracking aid shipments via QR codes at key checkpoints. The system monitors each pallet from offloading to delivery and flags any discrepancies in a centralized database.
Israel has facilitated the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, with Israeli officials condemning the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen by the ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Sunday, Israel announced a halt in military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and new aid corridors as Arab and European countries began airdropping supplies into the enclave.
However, the UN and several Western governments have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for what they described as a hunger crisis and insufficient amounts of aid reaching civilians.
Israeli officials have said that claims of mass starvation in Gaza are false and being amplified by not only Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, but also international humanitarian organizations and media organizations to manipulate global opinion.
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Dutch Nurse Under Police Investigation for Alleged Threats Against Israeli Patients
Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez
A Muslim nurse in the Netherlands is under police investigation after allegedly threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients — an incident that has sparked public outrage and intensified fears over rising antisemitism and patient safety in Europe’s health-care systems.
The comments were widely circulated by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who also exposed a recent case in Australia where two nurses were suspended for two years over antisemitic threats and remarks.
In a video shared on social media, Veifer denounced Dutch-Muslim nurse Batisma Chayat Sa’id’s remarks as a serious violation of medical ethics.
“Someone like that should be prosecuted and barred from treating patients. Imagine your grandparents being cared for by someone so hateful,” the Israeli influencer said.
Zorgwekkende dreiging op Instagram: Nederlandse verpleegkundige is bereid om “zionisten een extra spuitje te geven” en bereid “zionisten te laten sterven binnen de gezondheidszorg.” pic.twitter.com/xTnXNi1wH5
— CIDI
(@CIDI_nieuws) July 29, 2025
The incident was sparked when an Israeli-Dutch woman living in the Netherlands commented on a social media post by far-right politician Geert Wilders, who cautioned about what he called the country’s looming radical Islamization by 2050.
A social media account belonging to the Muslim nurse also commented on the post, claiming it would happen by 2027, to which the Israeli woman responded, “Your dream is our nightmare. But people wake up from nightmares. Our Netherlands, our Israel.”
“Nothing belongs to you! My grandparents built the Netherlands. I was born and raised here, and I will do everything in my power to help this country get rid of the Zionist cancer,” the nurse further replied.
“You know what I’m doing with Zionists — giving an extra injection as a nurse specialist. Letting them go to heaven!” Sa’id continued.
When the Israeli woman threatened to report her, Sa’id replied: “Haha, try your best! I don’t have a boss — I’m the boss! All Zionists can die, inside healthcare and beyond, and I’m happy to help with that!”
Shortly after her posts gained widespread attention, Sa’id deleted all her social media accounts, insisting that her identity had been stolen and that she was not responsible for such comments.
On Wednesday, local police detained Sa’id for questioning, but she denied the allegations, asserting that someone had impersonated her online.
“It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” the nurse said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”
Even after announcing plans to file an identity theft complaint, she faces skepticism from authorities, who have assigned a digital forensics expert to scrutinize her online accounts.
Last year, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
Earlier this year, two Australian nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift conversation with Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide.
They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
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French Authorities Halt Gaza Evacuations After Palestinian Student Expelled Over Viral Antisemitic Posts
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
French authorities have halted evacuations from Gaza after a Palestinian student was expelled from the prestigious Sciences Po Lille and placed under investigation, following the viral circulation of hundreds of antisemitic posts praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling for the murder of Jews.
The incident drew widespread condemnation and public outrage, prompting French ministers to demand answers and call for an investigation into how the Gazan student was allowed into the country in the first place.
On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that all further evacuations from Gaza would be suspended pending the completion of the investigation into the student’s background.
After receiving a scholarship, 25-year-old Nour Atalla, a Palestinian from Gaza, arrived in the country in early July to begin her master’s degree in law and communications this fall at the Institute of Political Science in Lille, northern France.
Barrot confirmed that discussions are ongoing about the student’s possible return to Gaza, making clear that she must leave the country pending the investigation’s outcome.
“She has no place at Sciences Po, nor in France,” the top French diplomat said.
On Thursday, local authorities reported that a criminal investigation is underway into Atalla, with the public prosecutor in Lille confirming the case was opened for “apology of terrorism, apology of crimes against humanity using an online public communication service.”
Barrot admitted lapses in the screening process that allowed her entry and has mandated a comprehensive review of everyone evacuated from Gaza to France.
“The security checks, carried out by the French services and Israeli authorities, did not detect the antisemitic content,” the French diplomat said.
Atalla is one of 292 Gazans admitted to the country following a court ruling that opened the door for Gazans to seek refugee status based on their nationality.
She was offered a place at Sciences Po Lille University based on “academic excellence” and following a recommendation by the French consulate in Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, the university announced it had revoked Atalla’s enrollment after hundreds of her past antisemitic and violent social media posts went viral, sparking widespread condemnation from political leaders and members of the local Jewish community.
In several of these posts, she glorified Hitler, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, called for the execution of Israeli hostages and the killing of Jews, and expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
In one post, Atalla shared a video of Hitler giving a speech about Jews, writing, “Kill their young and their old. Show them no mercy … And kill them everywhere.”
In another post shared on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, she wrote, “We must do everything we can to match the bloodshed — as much as possible.”