Isaac Herzog, current President of Israel“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”This is the sort of wolf whistling indulged in by the current Presiden of Israel, Isaac Herzog. It is clearly designed to legitimise the current genocide in Gaza. But when faced with publicly acknowledging the implications of his statement he rowed back, fearful maybe of the consequences at a later stage when a Nürnberg type tribunal might see fit to chop his head off.
When a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” the Israeli president claimed, “No, I didn’t say that.”The reason I'm bothering to pay any attention here to this racist is that he has strong Irish connections.
But he then stated: “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”
His father, Chaim Herzog, was born in Belfast, but he grew up in Dublin, on Bloomfield Avenue in "Little Jerusalem" off the South Circular Road. The people of that area were immensely proud of him as "local boy made good" when he became President of Israel.
After leaving Ireland, Chaim joind the British Army, in Intellegence, and was one of the first wave to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after WWII. That must have left some impression on him and one wonders how he woud have reacted to both his son's remarks and to the abomination of the current Israeli genocide.
Chaim's father was Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland and later Chief Rabbi of Israel. Isaac was known in Ireland for his Republican sympathies and is reported to have been an Irish speaker.
On what it actually meant to be Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Cormac Ó Gráda, has this lovely quote from Isaac's successor.
"Ninety-five percent of the population of Ireland is Catholic, five percent is Protestant, I am Chief Rabbi of the rest."
Chaim Herzog was later Israel's representative in the UN. Several clips of his speeches and interviews are available on YouTube, if you can put up with the kind of things he was saying. To my ears, he seems to have retained a Dublin accent, albeit a "polite" Dublin accent that sometimes veered towards Received Pronounciation.
ReplyDeleteThanks Andrea. That's fascinating. I'll have a listen.
ReplyDeleteThey are the views I held as a young man but they sound very hollow in the light of Israel's current behaviour, behaviour which shines a light on what had been going on ever since the Nakba.
ReplyDelete