Sadly, middling brained non-pros can see it too

Valid points, all

Nothing about this smells right

I mean

Sometimes I think about how the English played Irish and Jewish Brits off each other-- thinking of the promises to D'Israeli, to Balfour, to the f-ups that led to King David Hotel, all of it. Who knows how consciously the divide & separate tactics were deployed, but we're living the aftermath

Thanks. I remember reading this in high school, not many years after he gave the speech. At that time, he was right, albeit not doing what he, as president, should have been doing to draw Palestinians and Jewish Israelis into the same house

I don't know but my gut feeling is probably not. Shalom =peace and it would be overtly, undeniably antisemitic to change a park name simply for being Hebrew. I think Herzog Park is different in that it's based on a judgment/feeling about a man. A very decontextualized judgment

Yes! Veg enchiladas do not need to be mock meat, beans are good on their own. And least said about tofurkey, the better

(That said, I ❤️ soyrizo)

..This is not AT ALL to defend the the current genocide, or past violence and exploitation of Palestinians. But bleaching history is never a good idea

...I think it's important to contemplate why Herzog, who was at the liberation of concentration camps, who watched European Jews thrown under the bus out of appeasement, expedience, & antisemitism, defended Zionism so vociferously

Thank you. Hard agree. The only active temples in ROI left are in Dublin. While Cork has echoes of a past small Jewish community in Shalom Park and occasional remembrances of Gerald Goldberg, Jewish history is fading there.
And...

Vanishingly small community in Ireland, that they also are part of things. Ireland's history with Jews is vexed to put it mildly. I recommend @brian-hanley.bsky.social recent letters in History Ireland as a good place to gauge current temperature of things.

I think it's basically a bad idea to conflate Herzog and the logic of naming a park for him with the present actions of a specific Israeli government. While all public spaces and names/statues are contested and contestable, they can also be–as I think in this case–act as one of a few signs to a