A proposal to rename Dublin’s Herzog Park to show solidarity with Palestine has sparked accusations that it is an attempt to erase part of Ireland's Jewish history.
The park is named after Chaim Herzog, the father of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Chaim Herzog is himself a former Israeli president who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin. Chaim Herzog's father was the chief rabbi of Ireland from 1919 to 1937, during the country's march to independence.
Dublin City councillors were due to vote on a motion to rename the park on Monday, but the council's chief executive has suggested it should be withdrawn following a backlash.
Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin described the proposal as “overtly divisive and wrong” as he called for its withdrawal on Sunday. “The proposal is a denial of our history and will without any doubt be seen as anti-Semitic,” he said.
Ireland's chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said that renaming the park would mean the “shameful erasure of Irish-Jewish history”, and that it would send a “painful message of isolation to a minority already experiencing difficulties”.
He pointed to Chaim Herzog’s service with the Allied forces against Nazi Germany, and said he was “affectionately known as the Sinn Fein rabbi” for his support of the Irish Republican cause. “Herzog Park is not just a name on a sign. It is a visible reminder that Jewish life has deep and vibrant roots in Dublin,” he said, writing in The Irish Times.
Isaac Herzog's office described the move to rename the park as “shame and disgraceful.”
“We hope that the legacy of a figure at the forefront of establishing the relations between Israel and Ireland, and the fight against anti-Semitism and tyranny, will still get the respect it deserves today,” the Israeli presidency said.
Dublin City Council's chief executive Richard Shakespeare said on Monday that he recommended that the vote did not proceed because of an “administrative oversight”. He said that while local government laws give the council the authority to change the name, it requires them to do so using “a secret ballot of qualified electors” – but that regulations for such a ballot were “not yet in place”.
“I am proposing to withdraw the report from the agenda with a recommendation that the matter be referred back to the commemorations and naming committee for consideration of the statutory procedure,” he said.
Maurice Cohen, who leads the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said the proposal was “already perceived by our community as a gross act of anti-Semitism”.
The motion was originally submitted by Sinn Fein councillor Kourtney Kenny in June 2024. She proposed that the park should be renamed after Hind Rajab, a five-year old killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza. Renaming the park after Hind was not possible because of a policy adopted in 2017 which states that any nominee must have been dead for at least 20 years.
In July, the committee agreed that a motion to remove the Herzog name would be put to councillors.
Ireland has been among Israel’s most vocal critics in Europe, and relations between the two countries are strained. The Israeli embassy in Dublin closed in December last year after Ireland became one of the first European countries to recognise Palestine. Ireland has been preparing to sanction trade with illegal Israel settlements for over a year.
“The government has been openly critical of the policies and actions of the government of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, and rightly so,” said Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee.
“Renaming a Dublin park in this way – to remove the name of an Irish Jewish man – has nothing to do with this and has no place in our inclusive republic. In my view this name change should not proceed and I urge Dublin city councillors to vote against it.”
Barry Andrews, one of Dublin's European Parliament members, pointed to the period of reconciliation when the park was named. “The park was named after former Israeli president and Irishman Chaim Herzog in 1995, a few years after agreement of the Oslo Accords when the then Israeli government appeared to be serious about the two-state solution,” he wrote on X. “That is the version of Israel that we want, not the vicious and criminal nationalism of [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, [National Security Minister Itamir] Ben-Gvir and [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu.”
