THE Israeli ambassador to Ireland has branded protesters and critics “a shame and a disgrace on their country” for demanding his expulsion from Dublin over Israel’s sustained bombardment of Gaza.
Boaz Modai appeared with his wife and deputy chief of mission Nurit Tinari-Modai at the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs last week, where he engaged in a sequence of blunt exchanges with TDs and senators on Israel’s military response to Hamas’s shelling of its territory.
Modai clashed sharply with Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit, Seán Crowe of Sinn Fein and David Norris, an independent senator, as well as Brendan Smith and senator Jim Walsh of Fianna Fail.
He set the tone for the testy two-hour encounter on Wednesday with an opening statement that accused people who demonstrated outside his embassy in Dublin’s Ballsbridge this summer of bearing slogans “familiar to Jews . . . only 70 or 80 years ago”.
“Others who call for my expulsion from this country show no respect for democracy, for dialogue and for the hospitality for which this country is so famous,” he said. Modai said the Irish majority supported Israel and viewed it with “deep understanding and empathy”.
Advertisement
The public gallery was packed to capacity with members of the diplomatic corps in an Oireachtas committee room in Leinster House.
Modai was preceded by Ahmad Abdelrazek, the Palestinian ambassador to Dublin. Abdelrazek remained in the public gallery to hear Modai’s presentation.
Tinari-Modai sat beside her husband. She did not address the committee but spoke to Modai during his presentation.
Tinari-Modai generated international controversy in 2012 when an Israeli television channel published a document where she proposed publicly naming Israelis who supported the Palestinian cause in an effort to “embarrass their friends and relatives, and hopefully the local [Palestinian] activists will think that they work for the Mossad”.
Norris asked the ambassador about some of his wife’s public remarks: he noted that she had described Irish protesters as “ignorant, anti-semitic, with an intensely rooted hatred of Jews” and asked about her comment that “people’s sexual orientation should be used to embarrass them if they were pro-Palestinian”.
Advertisement
Norris continued: “She also referred to people who defend Israel as ‘the righteous among the nations in modern terminology’ which is an oblique reference to the Holocaust and in my view inappropriate. She referred to heathen hordes, agitated, anti-semitic, with a deeply rooted hatred of Jews. I wonder if the ambassador considers them appropriate for diplomatic personnel?”
Eric Byrne, a Labour TD, urged Modai to rebuild trust in the Israeli embassy in Dublin by instructing his staff to “stop posting silly, childish posts [on Facebook] of the Molly Malone statue dressed in a burqa.”
“When it comes to Molly Malone . . . we took that down after a few hours,” said Modai, when a “friend of the embassy” called to say it was not appropriate. “What we were trying to say . . . was [the Islamic State] is here. Within a month, it will get to Europe; within another, the United States”.
When Boyd Barrett sought to intervene in an exchange between the ambassador and Crowe, Modai reminded him: “You are not part of this committee.”.
That drew a rebuke from the committee chairman Pat Breen. TDs and senators are entitled to attend and speak at Oireachtas committees where they are not members, but they cannot vote.
Advertisement
When Boyd Barrett spoke again, Modai remarked: “I have not heard so many cliches in such a short time for a long time . . . The fact that he mentioned a few times that he is not an anti-semite raises questions. I am not saying that he is.”
“That is a disgraceful comment,” Boyd Barrett said, who attended some of the protests outside the Israeli embassy on Pembroke Road in Ballsbridge.
“The fact is that he mentioned it. I never claimed he was an anti-semite,” Modai said.
“The ambassador’s document did,” said Barrett, a reference to Modai’s opening statement, which said some of the protesters’ slogans at the embassy protest were “familiar to Jews 70 or 80 years ago”.
Modai also made an apparent reference to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams’s call on the Dail to “stand for one minute in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the Middle East” before the summer recess in July.
Advertisement
“Almost 1,200 Israeli citizens were murdered during the second intifada (2000-05) and to my knowledge not one Oireachtas deputy asked for a moment of silence in their memory,” he said. Asked if Israel would contribute to the reconstruction of Gaza in the wake of the ceasefire, Modai said it “probably” would.
“I hope the last cycle of violence will bring them back to the negotiating table and convince them that the only partner for dialogue is the Israelis . . . We are ready for compromise. I hope that the Palestinians are ready too. We are very much committed to the two-state solution — two states for two peoples.”