Members of the Jewish community will be invited to meet Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam and city councillors to be offered assurance the council is “not anti-Semitic”, following the recent Herzog Park controversy.
The small park in Rathgar, south Dublin, became the focus of international attention last week over a plan to remove the name of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog.
The park was named in 1995 in honour of Belfast-born Herzog, Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, who spent his early childhood in Dublin when his father was chief rabbi of Ireland. His son, Yitzhak Herzog, is the current president of Israel.
A recommendation last July by the council’s cross-party commemorations committee to remove the Herzog name from the park was be put to councillors for approval on Monday of last week.
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However, the proposal was suspended after it emerged the correct procedures for changing a placename had not been followed.
The proposal had generated a maelstrom of heightened emotions and protest, with those critical of Chaim Herzog’s record in power feeling they were being erroneously portrayed as anti-Semitic.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was among number of public figures who condemned the denaming proposal. “The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as anti-Semitic,” he said.
Others who criticised the council’s proposal included Tánaiste Simon Harris, the office of the Israeli president and Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder.
Council chief executive Richard Shakespeare told councillors last week he was contacted by the secretary general of the Department of Housing at 7pm on Saturday, November 29th, to ask “if what was being proposed was legally sound”. It subsequently emerged the denaming process lacked a legislative basis.
Many in the Jewish community, including people living in the vicinity of the park, contacted the council as well as individual councillors over the last week, to express their hurt at the proposal.
Councillors representing the Rathgar area on Monday of this week agreed a motion from Independent councillor Mannix Flynn that the Lord Mayor would “extend an invitation to the Jewish community of Dublin in order to assure them that Dublin City Council and its councillors are not anti-Semitic and have the upmost regard for the Jewish community and the Jewish people of the city of Dublin”.
It was “of the upmost importance that Dublin City Council send a clear message to the Jewish community and to the broader public, that Dublin City Council staff and Dublin city councillors are most definitely not anti-Semitic,” Mr Flynn’s motion said, “and, that Dublin is an open city democratic and transparent in all its dealings and a welcoming European capital city to all”.
The meeting heard Mr McAdam has agreed to host a reception, the details of which have yet to be finalised.
