DUBLIN (JTA) — A senior Irish politician compared Ireland’s only Jewish parliamentarian and its Israeli ambassador to Nazi war propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
The slur came in a heated exchange during a government committee hearing on the conflict in Gaza.
Sinn Fein international affairs spokesman Aengus O Snodaigh accused fellow parliament member Alan Shatter and Ambassador Zion Evrony of "using twisted logic and half-truths" to justify Operation Cast Lead.
"Goebbels would have been proud," he said.
Evrony demanded an apology from O Snodaigh for his "despicable" remark and criticized other committee members for deploying misinformation about Jewish and Israeli history.
The attack came during a long hearing before the government’s Foreign Affairs Committee at which Evrony and the Palestinian delegate to Ireland, Hikmat Ajjuri, answered questions about the situation in Gaza.
Shatter was the only committee member to speak in favor of Israel. Other committee members, including O Snodaigh, have called for Evrony’s expulsion.
The Irish minister for foreign affairs, Micheal Martin, also has been unusually outspoken in his criticism of Israel in recent weeks, calling the offensive in Gaza "appalling" in official statements.
Sinn Fein, O Snodaigh’s party, is the political wing of the now-disarmed Irish Republican Army, which has long-standing ties to Palestinian terrorist groups and whose members performed anti-British espionage on behalf of the Nazis during World War II.
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