THE ISRAELI ambassador to Ireland, Dr Zion Evrony, and Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter have reacted angrily to Sinn Féin deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh’s comparison of their methods to that of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Dr Evrony yesterday appeared at an emergency meeting of the Oireachtas foreign affairs committee to discuss the conflict in Gaza.
The ambassador and the Palestinian Delegate General to Ireland, Dr Hikmat Ajjuri, gave presentations about the conflict and took questions from TDs and Senators.
Mr Ó Snodaigh claimed Dr Evrony and Mr Shatter, a member of the committee who criticised the Palestinian representative’s presentation, had exposed the committee to “propaganda, twisted logic and half truths”.
He said: “I think Goebbels would have been proud of it.”
At the end of the meeting, Dr Evrony said he had heard many false accusations and examples of rewriting of history. “What overshadows this discussion is this despicable analogy the deputy from Sinn Féin made,” he said.
The ambassador said Mr Ó Snodaigh’s comments were “outrageous” and asked him to apologise.
Mr Ó Snodaigh said: “You won’t get an apology from me anyway.”
Dr Evrony said “some deputies here” would always believe everything Israel did was wrong and everything Palestine did was right. “They have their stereotypes. Don’t confuse them with the facts,” he said. “When you are deep in prejudice and stereotypes you are bound to fall into traps like this.”
The ambassador said Ireland was lucky in its neighbours – the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea. “Guess what? We live in a different neighbourhood,” he said. He said Ireland had never had to fight an outside enemy or use force. His spokesman later said it was important to clarify Dr Evrony meant “since independence”.
Mr Shatter, who had earlier remarked that he was the only Jewish member of the Oireachtas, described Mr Ó Snodaigh’s remarks as an “extraordinary contribution”.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Shatter said he was “appalled” by what he described as “the analogy he [Mr Ó Snodaigh] made between myself and Dr Goebbels”.
“It’s particularly appalling to suggest that a member of this House conducts himself in such a manner that resembles the conduct of the chief propagandist of Hitler’s Nazi Party, and quite extraordinary that such remarks should be made by a Sinn Féin member about the only Jewish member of this parliament.
“His reference about both myself and the ambassador gives a very interesting insight into the mindset of the deputy.”
Mr Shatter had earlier described the presentation of Dr Ajjuri as “economical with the truth”.
Dr Ajjuri, who sat beside Dr Evrony at the committee meeting, said Gaza had become a “virtual prison, cut off from the world completely, with massive economic consequences amounting to a humanitarian disaster”.
