Editorial: Israel shutting its embassy in Dublin is a very welcome move, even if it only has symbolic impact

​It is pleasing news that Israel has decided to close its embassy in Ireland.

It would be all the better if Israel would open a consulate in Belfast, where it has many friends.​

The decision to close the embassy in Dublin is likely to have little impact on a country so rabidly anti Israel.

Some critics of Ireland hope that its contempt for the Jewish state will see it downgraded in the eyes of the incoming Trump administration in the United States. But Irish exceptionalism – its arrogance and its ability to do as it pleases internationally – makes such an outcome unlikely.

Ireland has actually sought to make it easier for South Africa's legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice to succeed, by asking the court to broaden its definition of genocide.

Ireland’s political leaders were sluggish in condemning the Hamas mass murder of Jews on October 7 2023, and have since shown cross-party solidarity in their relentless condemnation of the Israeli response to that calculated Islamic extremist invasion and massacre of civilians. Leading the charge is a party that has spent decades defending terror in Britain and Ireland, the Irish nationalist extremists of Sinn Fein.

Under the previous UK government, there was the possibility that it would highlight and exploit Ireland’s position towards Israel with US leaders. Now we have a Labour government that has, in effect, allowed a Republic of Ireland that is suing Britain on legacy to dictate its new policy on dealing with the fallout of the Troubles.

A new government that will seemingly implement the will of an International Criminal Court that has equated the savages of Hamas with that first world democracy, Israel, defending itself against an act of total war.

Israel’s closure of its embassy in Dublin is most welcome as a symbolic move, but sadly will have little effect.