Photo Credit: Google Maps
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on December 15 that he would shut down his country’s embassy in Dublin, a move driven by Ireland’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state last May and its recent backing of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Ireland is one of three European nations to have officially recognized Palestinian statehood.
Last week, Faisal Saleh, the director of the Connecticut-based Palestine Museum US, told The Irish Times: “We’d be interested in making the former offices of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin into our permanent European headquarters. We want to change what was the headquarters for a war zone into an art zone.”
Isn’t it special…
Responding to the news of the Israeli embassy closing, Saleh said: “Good riddance. Who wants to have the presence of a genocidal state in their country? It’s horrific what they’re doing, and Ireland is one of the very few countries really supporting the Palestinian people.”
Simon Harris, Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister), described Israel’s decision to close its embassy in Dublin as “deeply regrettable,” adding, “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. 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. Nothing will distract from that.”
Founded in April 2018, the Palestine Museum US aims to “tell the Palestinian story to a global audience.” Though headquartered in the United States, the museum has extended its reach across Europe with a series of impactful exhibitions.
Most recently, it hosted “Art Under Fire” at Marino Church in Bantry, County Cork, Ireland. The exhibition, offered free to the public, has also been showcased at prestigious venues such as the Venice Biennale and the P21 Gallery in London earlier this year.
“We’re just making inquiries at this point. We thought it’d be a good idea because we’d been looking for places to have a permanent space, and it’d be good to have a presence in Ireland,” Saleh said, noting, “It’s a lot more efficient if you had a permanent space. But it would also have to make sense financially for us. We are still waiting to get some information. If it happened, we would open it as a museum with permanent exhibitions.”
“We’re very thankful to the Irish people for the stance they’re taking, and when we put the exhibit on in Bantry, we received tremendous support. It was beyond our expectations,” Saleh said.
We looked up Hasbarah in Irish on Google Translate. It’s “Poiblíocht.”
Looks like Israel has no poiblíocht in Dublin, no poiblíocht at all.