By Kayle Crosson | Staff Writer
The Israeli Embassy in Ireland has been embroiled in controversy after posting a series of anti- Palestine propagandist photographs.
The photos consisted of pictures of European landmarks in Muslim dress or armed with weapons.
They included the Molly Malone statue wearing a niqab, a form of Muslim dress where a cloth covers the face as a part of sartorial hijab.
The image was accompanied by a slogan reading, “Israel is the last frontier of the free world”.
A storm of protest followed the postings made over the weekend resulting in the Israel in Ireland’s Facebook account removing the pictures.
However an embassy spokesperson when speaking to The Sun, remarked that they were not sure of the reason why the photo was taken down.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the Israeli ambassador would not comment on the pictures because of the ongoing nature of the conflict, “we are now in the middle of a war and I have other things to deal with”.
However when The University Times contacted the Israeli embassy through its Facebook outlet, it received the following response: “It (the photo) was taken from a web project in Israel and was removed when the first person complained.
The Palestinians just killed four of our people. The Hamas tortured to death 160 children in forcing them to build those terror tunnels against Israel, and the media here is obsessed with some images that were long removed.”
The paper approached both the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Irish4Israel Organization for further commentary regarding the contentious image and its subsequent removal.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign claimed that this action is congruent with previous posts from the Israeli Embassy and described its media output as “routinely racist and anti-Palestinian.”
The organisation also called on the Irish government to take a firmer stance in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, “The Irish government must be to the fore in calling for an international arms embargo on Israeli, and for Israel’s suspension from the Euro-Med trade agreement with the EU.
It is also clear that the Irish public would like to see the removal of the Israeli Ambassador; that the Embassy seeks to stir up hatred against Palestinians and Muslims in Ireland simply adds more fuel to that fire.”
Irish4Israel also replied to The University Times’ request for comment, raising questions on the larger issue of the media’s coverage of the Israeli-Hamas conflict by suggesting that reports omit many of the acts committed by Hamas during the escalation of this conflict.
The organization believes that Irish media has displayed a sense of bias regarding its coverage and paralleled Hamas’ activity to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), “We don’t expect the media to report everything. All we ask is for the media to be fair and so far the Irish media has been shameful in its bias against Israel.
The same chattering classes would cheer on ISIS if they were attacking Israeli civilians; there is no difference between ISIS and Hamas which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood”.
The Israeli-Hamas conflict has been reignited due to kidnapping of three Israeli teens in the West Bank last month, leading to an escalation that has resulted in over one thousand deaths.
Thousands of people took to the street across Ireland on Saturday calling for an end to violence in Gaza.
A crowd of about 3000 marched from the Spire in O’ Connell Street, Dublin to the Israeli embassy.
Demonstrations were held in more than 16 locations across the country including Derry, Limerick, Cork, and Waterford.
