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Irish Parliament Passes Motion Accusing Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Gaza as Dublin’s Hostility Toward Jewish State Mounts

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin speaks to members of the media during the 78th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 19, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan

The Irish parliament on Thursday passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza,” continuing Ireland’s fierce hostility toward the Jewish state since the latter was attacked by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas last year.

As the measure passed, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said that the government intends to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) before the end of the year.

“The government’s decision to intervene in the South African case was based on detailed and rigorous legal analysis. Ireland is a strong supporter of the work of the court, and is deeply committed to international law and accountability,” Martin said in a statement.

“We are also committed to supporting and promoting a strict interpretation of the Genocide Convention to ensure the highest level of protection possible for civilians caught up in situations of armed conflict and to apply the highest standards of conduct on those engaged in conflict,” he added. “The government has insisted that both Israel and Hamas be held accountable for violations committed.”

Since December, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

In January, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations — which Israel and its allies have described as baseless and may take years to get through the judicial process. Israeli officials have strongly condemned the ICJ proceedings, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

Pro-Israel advocates welcomed the ICJ ruling because it did not impose a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza and called for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas last Oct. 7. Rather than declare that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and order the Jewish state to stop its military campaign in the Palestinian enclave, the court issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide.

Last week, South Africa filed the bulk of the relevant material to support its allegations.

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.

This week, Ireland accepted the appointment of a full Palestinian ambassador for the first time, confirming that Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid would step up from her current position as Palestinian head of mission to Ireland.

In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” According to The Irish Times, Ireland is due to have its presence in Ramallah in the West Bank upgraded from a representative office to a full embassy.

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. She 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.

More recently, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris last week 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.

Wahba Abdalmajid told The Irish Times in a new interview this week that the UN should suspend Israel from the global body over the UNRWA ban. “There must be accountability,” she said, claiming that a failure to suspend Israel would create “a vacuum in international law.”

This week, anti-Israel activists began a three-day sit-in protest in front of the US Embassy in Dublin to demand that the US stop funding “Zionist war crimes.”

The latest round of anti-Israel actions in Ireland came shortly after the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, on Monday released a new report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history.

Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 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.”

Just last month, an Irish official, Dublin City Councilor Punam Rane, claimed during a council meeting that Jews and Israel control the US economy, arguing that is why Washington, DC does not oppose Israel’s war against Hamas.

The post Irish Parliament Passes Motion Accusing Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Gaza as Dublin’s Hostility Toward Jewish State Mounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”

He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.

But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.

He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”

He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.

He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.

He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.

He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”

Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.

“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.

SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY

Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.

Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.

Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.

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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly

US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.

A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.

Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.

On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.

WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”

“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.

“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.

JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel

Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.

The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.

While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.

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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis

Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot

Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.

“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”

Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.

“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.

Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.

She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.

The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”

Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”

The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.

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