Motion to rename Dublin's Herzog Park over links to Israel slammed

A MOTION TO rename Dublin’s Herzog Park because it is named after an Irish-born, former president of Israel is to be debated on Monday.

A meeting of Dublin City Council on Monday is scheduled to debate a proposal to remove the park’s existing name and to hold a consultation process on choosing a new name for the park which is located in Rathgar.

It follows an agreement by members of the council’s Commemorations and Naming Committee last July, with one objection, that the name “Herzog” should be removed from the park.

The small village park, which is also home to Rathgar Tennis Club, was originally known as Orwell Quarry Park when it opened in 1985 on the site of a former quartz and limestone quarry.

It was renamed Herzog Park in 1995, in honour of Chaim Herzog, the then President of Israel who spent many years of his childhood in Dublin and whose father was a Chief Rabbi of Ireland as well as marking the tri-millennium of Jerusalem. His son, Issac, is also the current president of Israel.

Former justice minister, Alan Shatter, has accused Dublin City Council of going “full-on Nazi” over the proposal. 

Shatter, a well-known member of Ireland’s Jewish community and a former Fine Gael TD in Dublin in whose constituency Herzog Park is located, claimed the Commemorations and Naming Committee was determined to “erase Jewish/Irish history.”

In a post on the social media platform X, he claimed the committee’s report on the issue was “shameful.”

Shatter also noted that Herzog Park is located adjacent to Ireland’s only Jewish primary and secondary schools – Stratford National School and Stratford College.

“It seems some members of the council are determined to make Dublin an inhospitable and hostile place for Dublin’s Jewish community and Jewish children attending their school in Rathgar,” he added.

Shatter called on councillors to reject “this egregious, antisemitic, committee decision.”

A motion regarding the name of Herzog Park made by Labour Party councillor, Fiona Connelly, in December 2024 was adopted by the council’s South East Area Committee.

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Connelly sought a report on the process of how the park was originally named after Chaim Herzog as she claimed that she had been informed that the naming of the park “did not follow the correct procedures” at the time.

People Before Profit councillor, Conor Reddy, also raised the issue at a council meeting last January when he sought information from city managers about the protocols for renaming public parks.

Reddy pointed out that there were over 2,700 signatures at the time to a petition to have Herzog Park renamed as Hind Rajab Park after a five-year-old girl killed by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza in January 2024.

The petition, which was started jointly by Irish Sport for Palestine as well a community football team, 1815 FC, and the 1916 Societies – an Irish separatist movement – currently has over 3,400 signatures.

The groups have also called for a playing pitch in the park to be renamed after four young Bakr boys who were killed by the IDF while playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

A separate, similar petition has called for the park in Rathgar to be renamed “Free Palestine Park.”

Reddy claimed Herzog Park honoured someone who joined the Haganah paramilitary in 1935 which was a force that was active in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine before and during the 1948 Nakba – the mass displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War.

He highlighted how Herzog also went on to become a major general in the Israeli army which occupied Palestine and subsequently president of Israel between 1983 and 1993.

In a report prepared for Monday’s meeting, the council’s assistant chief executive, Eileen Quinlivan, said if the removal of the name is approved by councillors the next step will be “to draft and implement the consultation process.”

The Chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland said the motion sends a “hurtful and isolating message” to Jewish people in Ireland.

Maurice Quinlan, the chair of the council, said it was calling on Dublin city councillors to reject the motion.

“The removal of the Herzog name from this park would be widely understood as an attempt to erase our Irish Jewish history,” he said.

“The Jewish Community asks the Council to stand with fairness, with respect and with the shared values that bind all communities in this city and reject this antisemitic motion that will label anyone who votes for it as an antisemite.”

Additional reporting by Emma Hickey

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