 Hello friends and subscribers. Very warm welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rose here bringing you today's video or I should say tonight's video really from Jerusalem in Israel like the rest of the world. We went back to winter time a couple of weeks ago so now we have these kind of delightful short evenings and it's starting to feel very nice and wintery here. So of course there is a war going on as kind of everyone around the world at this point seems to have an opinion and know about but it's ultimately going on for more than a month and it's just kind of at that point where I feel like there was a tipping point in the Russian Ukraine conflict at which it's just difficult to engage so closely with the news for that amount of time. Once you get past the one month mark I think it becomes hard to sort of keep that mental energy with it so to an extent like many people here because obviously here the war impacts our daily life to quite a considerable extent. So I've started cutting back a little bit on my news coverage on my news consumption I should say but something that has been making the news here in Israel actually surprisingly has been Ireland's response. So firstly I'm sorry to folks who are long-term long-term subscribers and subscribe hoping you might get some interesting videos about Israel and instead there's been a bunch of stuff about Ireland. As an Irish Jew with a Jewish family living in Ireland it's difficult for me not to sort of get sucked into this territory but our usual programming about my expeditions to parts of the border and well maybe not that that's probably not a good idea for the considerable future to go poking around any border especially not the one with Lebanon but we'll get back to other things soon as well on this YouTube channel. Just because unlike most of my videos this one is freeform I don't have any script I'm going to be adding timestamp so if you're sick of me jammering on already and you want to get to the point feel free to skip ahead. So as I mentioned Ireland's reaction to what's been going on here in Israel has been making news. It's been making news and it's also the kind of only in the last year I started really being my Hebrew is good enough to start consuming news in Hebrew through the TV through reading articles and reading comments and that was where I came across by the way these a few people calling for stuff like boycotts and breaking off diplomatic relations. I don't I just want to put this out there once actually I've already commented this and wrote it on Twitter. I don't personally boycott Ireland. I've no intention of boycotting Ireland and I think the boycotts are really really ineffective generally. My rationale was firstly I did read people saying they're considering it. Secondly after that I wanted to kind of ruffle some feathers on the Irish left and perhaps troll them a little bit and that objective seems to have been met because I think my tweet stating that there were some folks here thinking about that got something like a I think 260,000 impressions on Twitter the last time I checked anyway quite a lot and generated a lot of very fierce sort of reactions on the Twitter sphere but I want to put it out there again just not to not so much to throw mud over the fence but just to point out that when people are talking about diplomatic relations and stuff like boycotts there's always the possibility that the other side can do the same thing and I actually have well I think the boycotts are a terrible idea because boycotting Israel the BDS movement firstly it's ineffective. Secondly you're targeting you're not targeting you could be affecting the livelihood of Palestinians in fact some of the classic targets of BDS are the some of the few kind of havens in Israel where there is really good cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. Unlikely some of the Irish exporters doing business here including Tealings Whiskey who I met their team or at least one of their team members recently I think they're a great company and you know you do have people like Richard Boyd Barrett getting up and making that I think are anti-Semitic remarks but my objective ire for that is actually the Irish police the Gardie. I think that there is a line of legitimate criticism of Israel that nobody opposes including me and I question the proportionality at times of what's happening in Gaza but when you go and you know call accuse Israel of committing a genocide which is really a baseless accusation. Ethnic cleansing is completely baseless, baseless apartheid is baseless and any I really support the IHRA definition the working definition of anti-Semitism I didn't really go into the detail in the video but the what are called the instances in that definition one of which is that comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel are anti-Semitic even some governments that accept the definition don't accept those including Ireland but I think the Israel Nazi Germany one really should be because I don't see any reasons for any valid comparisons to be made and it's only done very deliberately and I think it reflects anti-Semitism and I do think that Richard Boyd Barrett is a anti-Semite because he have it up on this YouTube channel stood up and Dublin a few days ago and likened Israel's genocide in Gaza to what the what the Germans did to the Jews in the Holocaust and I think that's totally unacceptable and I really think remarks like that should be classified as hate speech there is hate speech legislation in Ireland there's been articles recently about Irish Jews being scared and I think I don't think that you know sort of debates in the doll about about the proportionality the response make people scared I think people like Richard Boyd Barrett make people scared and I think there's a total there has been a failure on the part on Ireland's behalf to tackle anti-Semitism which is rising there as it is in other countries around the world anyway I want to talk today about the expulsion or the proposed expulsion of the Israeli ambassador there's going to be a motion coming before the Irish parliament the doll on Wednesday of this week calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador right and they wanted to just say a few points about that firstly proposing to expel the ambassador makes no sense this is the first thing I have to say about it it I don't understand why they're looking to expel an ambassador the ambassador is just kind of the front person of the embassy and it might be because the incumbent Israeli ambassador to Ireland Dana Ehrlich had the temerity to tell Michael Higgins de Higgins the president of Ireland to a point that Ireland was not neutral when it comes to Israel Palestine and I think that is 100% accurate Ireland Ireland's foreign policy even its recent voting history at the EU in which it was joined by Spain and only like one other country in trying to get a demand for a unconditional ceasefire without referencing October 7th it's a pretty foreign it's a pretty hostile foreign policy and the Irish left PBP and Sinn Fein are falling over themselves trying to play mental gymnastics or maybe I should say word gymnastics trying to say that well we're militarily neutral which is easy when Ireland is a very very tiny army but anyway they say we're militarily neutral but that doesn't mean our foreign policy has to be neutral and that makes I think absolutely zero sense because it's not just foreign policy isn't just words it's voting action which is big rep big ramifications and I think that once you pursue a one-sided foreign policy which Ireland does about Israel you're not neutral and that's fine but so it doesn't make sense that to me that she was called out for that but anyway read my previous point I don't know why explaining the Israeli ambassador is a logical target because if you expel one ambassador the second in charge at the embassy the deputy will probably have to become the ambassador and then what happens you you want to you know it's like kind of a I forget the word like jumping chairs that game or musical chairs that you know you play as a kid it's going to be like they expel one and then someone comes in so it's illogical and the second thing really is that now when I say definitely opposed to boycotts that's I think a flippant idea but devolving or constricting diplomatic relations with Israel is an idea I have with Ireland is an idea I have supported now pro-israel folk in Ireland and there are some of them will say you know well what about us we're we're pro-israel don't tariff always the same brush and my response to that has been that you know embassies are there really traditionally to talk between governments not to talk between people and I don't see why pro-israel movements can't exist even in countries without strong diplomatic relations and the only idea I've suggested is really constricting relations with Ireland like managing them out of the UK as they were done for a while that's called a non-resident embassy because I do think that there you know there comes a point where it's just hostility and it's kind of like a friendship where you're just kind of arguing the whole time you kind of wonder it's a certain point is this friendship worth maintaining uh so that's my point read the diplomatic affairs but any in any way if Ireland chooses to initiate this the problem they're facing is the reciprocity and diplomacy that Israel will kick out the irish embassy here and people have people have expressed the self-interested concern in Ireland that doing so will imperil two things firstly the governments attempt to uh get an irish citizen irish Israeli dual citizen out of Ireland out of Gaza and secondly there's apparently also 40 40 other irish passport holders in the Gaza strip so people are saying hang on if we kick out the Israeli ambassador and they kick out our our embassy we're going to have a hard time getting these people out of Gaza the second issue that i've seen and it's worth pointing out is that Ireland is a big troop contributor to the united nations interim force in Lebanon called unifil and that if they were to kick lose their representation in Israel that might somehow I don't exactly understand how but I do actually because the irish army has a base in Israel remarkably I was surprised to learn this a couple years ago uh while I was poking around the north of Israel doing my weird geeky hobbit geeky uh hobby of border spotting which I now would not suggest in a million years it do not go near the israel lebanon border now and that's not it's not actually it shouldn't be I shouldn't be trying to make a uh laughing at it because uh people have actually been killed in the last few days by being targeted by uh rockets across the border and when you watch these videos that they show up on the hispala news site to realize that on the border anyone can pick you off so uh don't do what I did a few months ago and stand 70 meters from the lebanese border or at least wait until uh the security situation has drastically changed but anyway uh when I was up there in the communities along the blue line a very beautiful part of israel um I saw that there was an I think it's called camp Zaytuni and it's where it's an irish army base on israeli soil uh that services I think it's actually on daf the on daf is the UN mission doing the peacekeeping between israel and syria uniphilus lebanon and their bases in nekura so anyway there's various reasons why it might be problematic from Ireland's perspective what I wanted to talk about uh in this video was a couple of things and I'm going to add timestamps to all this jumble of words so it's a bit intelligible um was firstly uh just dealing with a couple of questions firstly you know is this going to actually happen and I would add is another question is your president so I went on uh went on google as I do and uh I saw that there is president Israeli ambassadors have been kicked out of turkey and Bahrain and other countries but this would definitely be if this were to happen I'll explain in a second why it's very unlikely to happen but if it were hypothetically it would be really a very unique thing for a western democracy and it would really put um Ireland already it's kind of sort of out of culture was the EU in a very strange anti-israel position but it has happened so I don't think we should discount the possibility that it can could potentially happen if not now I suspect if there is a change in government in Ireland and Sinn Féin really get into power then uh that is that's where I think this could actually really really you know be like a legitimate thing that would occur so I don't think it's a it's a non-runner indefinitely here's the Irish government here it's called Dull Aaron is Ireland has a bicameral system and Dull Aaron is the um but is the is the legislative chamber and uh now what happened is the the crazy guy I've done videos about because I think he's anti-Semitic and I think that this race hate speech needs to be shown to the world that it's out there uh so that potentially someone could do something about it uh he is uh I'm talking about Richard Boyd Barrett he is people before a prophet as you can see they've only got five seats but Sinn Féin who have done an about uh you turn on their position regarding the tenure of the Israeli ambassador initially they said it's not constructive and then their leader Mary Lou McDonald uh came out a few days ago in fact at the Sinn Féin Ardèche over the weekend said we should expel the Israeli ambassador so assuming everyone votes along party lines adding up the numbers we get 36 uh mathematics are not my strong point as anyone watching this uh can can probably tell uh 41 and the social democrats who are actually tabling this now uh will get you up to so we're kind of in the 40s and maybe 50s if labor can be convinced and if the Green Party can be uh can get some defectors but this uh this core of Finafall and Fina Gale together comprise 69 seats so in order to in order to get a majority almost all the opposition would have to vote in uh in unison for right this and Green Party would have to defect almost entirely so it's a very unlikely scenario but that's why at the moment you're seeing social democrats who are tabling the motion that why that's why they're lobbying the Green Party and labor to get their people over to it because people before profit already support the cause and Sinn Féin support the cause so currently it's a tripartite group of 36 and 36 and 6 is 42 42 and 5 is 47 so they've got 47 members sort of baked in and uh potentially so it's probably not going to happen but in any event I just wanted to point out as well that this they tried before uh there was all there was a previous motion to expel the Israeli ambassador that was in 2021 and that failed it was during uh it was during Operation Guardian of the Walls so whenever Israel goes to fight a war in Gaza, Sinn Féin and people before profit get their knickers in a twist and try to kick out the Israeli ambassador and this isn't anything new by the way to kick out kick out the ambassador it's been like a motif even since I would say before I left Ireland in 2015 I used to monitor Twitter and you'd see people going on about kicking out the Israeli ambassador so it's been a kind of long-standing fixation of the Irish left this idea of forcing the Israeli ambassador out now there's one lady that I wanted to bring up on the screen and she is I'm going to explain why this is significant in a second so I hadn't heard of Holly Cairns until uh two days ago because I guess I just don't keep up with Irish politics so carefully she is later leader of the social Democrats and I want to point something out well firstly she's younger than me which is I must have been pretty cool it would be cool to be a professional politician in your young 30s if you can still call it that but she this this politician Holly Cairns is tabling the motion as the leader of the social Democrats now I'm going to just zoom myself over here this is just at the tail end of the Irish Times article and it's really significant and I'll explain why it says social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said that the ambivalent response of the international community to the litany of war crimes uh israel is allegedly committing and the Gaza Strip was shameful Miss Cairns said that the EU's trade deal with Israel should be suspended until it complies with international law um now when we're talking about the trade deal this uh the reason I'm highlighting this is it would be much more this is much more significant because if Ireland were to break off its diplomatic relations with Israel in a hypothetical world again I have mixed feelings part of me is like well you know just go ahead and do it because you've been talking about this for years and uh it doesn't seem like a very very warm relationship and uh you know maybe it maybe we're better off without those relations um but it might cause more trouble on the Irish side and it also might cause Ireland trouble because it would be taking a very contrary foreign policy decision to the EU now but Holly Cairns is threatening and again uh this is not something that's actually going to happen because the motion will fail and they're throwing all these things into the motion but this agreement the Euro Mediterranean agreement is as far as I can tell the agreement being referenced and you can see here Ireland's is signatory to it as well as all these European countries and the EC and the European colon steel community and Israel on the other side so this kind of document forms like the framework for relations and there are formalized relations between the EU and Israel we saw in the realm of aviation the open skies agreement that was amazing amazingly beneficial for for Israelis and good for Europeans as well I would think you know I'm sure both parties I'm sure Reiner is benefiting plenty from operating flights from Ben-Gurion uh but you know Ireland can't suggest that they kick Israel out of the EU because Israel's not in the EU but Israel does have this framework that governs relationship governs relations and it's here now I'm just I have human rights up on my search because I want to point out where her line of attack uh Holly Cairns it says here in article two that relationships between the parties as well as the provisions of the agreement itself shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this agreement so I would say this is a very very nebulous clause it doesn't kind of say well there is we're going to hold Israel to this yardstick for human rights and if it doesn't pass that yardstick the agreement is null and void but that's what she is arguing that there is this clause in the Israel uh you know Israel Mediterranean agreement and it says if you're not a human right friendly place then that's kind of an essential part of this agreement and her line of arguing is that well if you're not a human right abiding country then this agreement should be thrown into the garbage bin or onto the fireplace whatever analogy you prefer um so that is is being tacked on as a like kind of addendum to the coverage in Ireland because everyone is so fixated on the idea of you know they're trying to kick out the Israeli ambassador and um even if this motion in a hypothetical world that it did pass I think that would actually be the and it was a binding motion which it isn't that would actually be the bigger takeaway in my opinion there's much more that would be a much more of an extremely hostile action um by Ireland against Israel and even if that effort was also doomed to failure it would be more significant and I think I said enough at this point about the what's going on um in summary uh there are there will not be um this motion probably almost certainly will not pass on Wednesday but you know pigs can fly tomorrow and dramatic voting patterns can happen uh in any event it would be non-binding but it does represent an attempt by uh by the social democrats to not only kick out the Israeli ambassador however logical that might be uh but also to attempt to undermine and in fact cancel uh Israel's the agreement holding the Israel-EU relations together thanks for watching today's video hopefully a couple of things I've said a couple of things that were interesting about what's going on um as I mentioned I think Ireland's uh policy towards Israel is has sort of evoked a lot of interest on this side of the uh the bilateral and I haven't seen quite a lot of coverage so certainly this is something of interest to a lot of folks here at the moment uh thanks for watching if you want to get more videos like this do subscribe we'll get away from the Ireland theme eventually so keep with the YouTube channel if you're so inclined and uh looking forward to bringing out new videos very soon