Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Sunday that Israel will be shutting its embassy in Ireland, citing the “extreme anti-Israel policy of the Irish government.”
“The antisemitic actions and rhetoric that Ireland is taking against Israel are based on delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish state and on double standards,” said Sa’ar in a statement. “Ireland has crossed all red lines in its relationship with Israel.”
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris called the decision “deeply regrettable.”
“I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel,” Harris wrote on X following Sa’ar’s announcement. “Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.”
“Ireland wants a two-state solution and for Israel and Palestine to live in peace and security. Ireland will always speak up for human rights and international law,” he added.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said the two countries would maintain diplomatic relations and that there were no plans to close Ireland’s embassy in Israel.
Ireland has been one of Israel’s most outspoken critics throughout the war in Gaza, which broke out on October 7, 2023, with Hamas’s unprecedented attack in which 3,000 terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, mostly civilians.
Israel recalled its ambassador in May after Ireland became one of three EU countries that said they would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. Ireland has not recalled its envoy to Israel. In November, the Irish parliament passed a nonbinding motion declaring that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.”
And last week, Ireland’s cabinet voted to join the case accusing Israel of perpetrating “genocide” during its war with Hamas in Gaza, brought by South Africa at the International Criminal Court in The Hague last year.
Aside from the Irish government’s views and actions regarding the war, a report published last month by education monitoring group IMPACT-se exposed profound distortions of the Holocaust, Israel, Judaism and Jewish history in textbooks used in Irish public schools.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, a former foreign minister, criticized Sa’ar for the move on Sunday, writing in a post on X that it was the wrong approach.
“The decision to close Israel’s embassy in Ireland is a victory for antisemitism and anti-Israel organizations. The way to deal with criticism is not to run away but to stay and fight,” Lapid wrote.
After Sa’ar responded, telling Lapid to be ashamed of himself for “defining the Irish treatment of Israel as ‘criticism,'” the opposition leader doubled down, saying that “Israel needs to hold embassies precisely in places where there is a strong conflict with the government, and a foreign minister who only gives up and runs away from conflict is not doing his job.”
Meanwhile, Sa’ar also announced that Israel would open an embassy in Moldova, which already has an embassy in Israel. The opening is expected to occur in the next year, and Israel is beginning the process of finding a site and appointing an ambassador.
“There are countries that are interested in strengthening their ties with Israel and do not yet have an Israeli embassy,” said Sa’ar. “We will adjust the Israeli diplomatic structure of our missions while giving weight, among other things, to the approach and actions of the various countries towards Israel in the political arena.”
Moldova’s Ambassador to Israel Alex Roitman praised the announcement, writing on X that “it was a natural step to make long ago.”
“I’m convinced a full-fledged Israeli diplomatic mission in Chișinău, together with Moldovan mission in Tel Aviv, will contribute to goals of widening the bilateral relation in the fields: political, economic, social, in the sectors: medicine, agriculture, military, cyber, etc,” he wrote.
JTA contributed to this report.