The comments were made in an article in a Jewish newspaper in response to views expressed by an aide to the taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who had refused to officially support Zionist claims to the territory dating back thousands of years.
Raanan Gissin, who is currently the senior adviser to Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister of Israel since Sharon’s stroke on January 4, said Israel is “having to teach the same lessons” to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Ireland.
Last week an Irish government spokesman declined to comment on Gissin’s reaction. Officials said the newspaper report, headlined “Irish Zionist slur blasted by Israel” was met with “disappointment all round” and that relations with Israel have never been better.
Israeli foreign ministry officials said the same last week and members of both sides are to attend a Holocaust memorial at the Mansion House in Dublin today.
“The criticism arose because this (Irish) official refused to take a position on Zionism,” said one government source. “But he had never heard the taoiseach speak of it, there is no official policy, and a complicated subject like that isn’t something that could be addressed with a soundbite anyway.”
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The article, which appeared in the Jewish Telegraph, a conservative Jewish newspaper based in Manchester, was published in response to an editorial that appeared in The Dubliner magazine last month under the byline of Justin Keating, a former industry minister.
Keating wrote that having once supported the creation of Israel following the Holocaust, he now believed that “Zionists have absolutely no right in what they call Israel”.
In the weeks following publication The Dubliner received more than 2,000 e-mails complaining about the piece in a campaign organised by Honestreporting.com, a pro-Israeli website. A reporter from the Jewish Telegraph then called the taoiseach’s office asking for Ahern to go on the record criticising Keating’s opinion.
The government’s press office refused and the call was taken by an official in the taoiseach’s office who received questions by e-mail, including a request for Ireland to officially support the Zionist claim of historical rights to the land dating back over 3,000 years.
John Kennedy, an official in the taoiseach’s office was quoted as saying: “support for Israel isn’t premised on Zionism . . . Zionism is essentially a religious issue — a faith issue. I don’t think you’re going to get the taoiseach to take a position on that.
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“Zionism is not part of relevant policy here. Even within Judaism you get a division on Zionism. Our recognition of Israel and our exchange of ambassadors is all in the modern age, it’s in an age where we simply recognise Israel as being a state of the modern world.”
Kennedy’s refusal to take a position provoked outrage from Gissin, who compared Ireland’s position to that of Ahmadinejad.
“It is not enough,” he told the Jewish Telegraph. “There is a culture of hatred that says the Jews have no right to live here as an entity. We are here as our birthright and not as a conqueror. If you don’t support Zionism, ipso facto, you are actually saying, in the logical progression, we don’t support the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own in their own ancestral homeland.
“Ahmedinejad is trying to erase Israel off the map by not recognising that Jews have a birthright. We are having to teach the same lessons to Ahmadinejad and Ireland.”
Kennedy declined to comment.
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Last week Gissin said he had not been misquoted and played down any diplomatic furore over the issue.
“I didn’t quarrel with the Irish government,” he said. “But people say ‘we recognise Israel’s right to exist’, well thank you, but no thank you.
“Those who say that recognise they can’t destroy us because we are strong. They don’t accept our endemic right, like the endemic right of the Irish people to the land there.
“We never give up our claim and our right, as the Irish would never give up the claim of what was historically Irish territory even though it’s under the control of Great Britain.”
Ireland renounced the constitutional claim on the six counties of Northern Ireland in 1998 as part of the peace process.
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Government officials in Dublin played down Gissin’s comments last week. “There’s absolutely no difficulty with the relationship between Israel and Ireland,” a spokesman said.