LAST WEEK ENDED with Israel’s surprise announcement that it would be closing its embassy in Dublin. 

In a move decried by Israeli newspaper Haaretz as ‘a win for gimmicks over diplomacy’, the Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar shuttered the embassy citing the ‘anti-Semitism’ of the Irish government. 

To illustrate his point, he specifically referred to Taoiseach Simon Harris as ‘anti-Semitic’ for Harris’ statement: ‘Ireland is not anti-Israel but Ireland is absolutely anti the starvation of children.’ One can only imagine Sa’ar’s horror, then, that the first Palestinian children to receive healthcare treatment arrived in Ireland this week.

One suspects that it is this kind of behaviour – along with intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, or the recognition of the Palestinian state – that Israel perceives as so grossly unthinkable.

Ireland, like all countries, is home to anti-Semitism, which must be emphatically called out wherever one comes across it. That is not why Israel is causing this commotion. Are we to assume, for example, that there is no anti-Semitism in the countries that have most facilitated Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza? No anti-Semitism in the United States? The United Kingdom? In Germany? 

Neither Harris nor President Michael D Higgins has brooked the accusation, and Higgins spoke powerfully on the matter this week, saying: “It is a very serious business to actually brand a people because of the fact they disagree with prime minister Netanyahu who is in breach of so many bits of international law and has breached the sovereignty of Lebanon, Syria and would like to have settlement in each of them.”

Harris, for his part, asked: “What about Israel’s actions? What about what Netanyahu is doing to the innocent children of Gaza?” It is likely to be one of Harris’ last public pronouncements as Taoiseach (until they rotate him back in, of course), and it was a creditable one. 

All dagger, no cloak

Harris was back in the Dáil as Taoiseach this week while government formation talks trundle on. Ivana Bacik of Labour pulled the ‘I break up first’ move this week and confirmed her party wouldn’t be going into a government that has clearly already long since moved on anyway. The main order of business this week was to elect the new Ceann Comhairle by secret ballot.

Unfortunately, none of our TDs saw fit to have any fun with this opportunity for cloak and/or dagger shenanigans. 

As a TD beholden to a party whip, this is basically your one chance to do something exciting and not get found out. You could vote for yourself and deny it forever. You could all get together and prank one of the terrified new TDs by making them Ceann Comhairle. Where is the scheming? Where is the backstabbing? Have none of these people seen Conclave?

Well, maybe there was a little bit of backstabbing. Fianna Fáil’s Seán O Fearghaíl, who has been Ceann Comhairle for the last two terms of the Dáil, was shunned this time around by just about all of his party colleagues, at the public urging of Micheál Martin himself. All dagger, no cloak.

No, Martin decided that of all the TDs in the Dáil, he would rather see the position go not to one of his own, but to Verona Murphy of the Regional Independent Group. It is a new technical group of nine TDs which is, coincidentally, set to join Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in coalition. Simon Harris also encouraged his TDs to back Murphy in the secret ballot. Strange how they both independently came to that decision. 

Given the role of Ceann Comhairle is to preside impartially over the business of the Dáil, some may argue that it’s inappropriate for it to be seemingly auctioned off in such a way, to say nothing of how boring it is to know how a secret ballot is going to go before the ballots are even cast. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of a secret ballot (the purpose being, I assume, to entertain). 

Murphy has never been shy in airing her controversial views. In 2019, when she first emerged in national politics during the Wexford by-election to replace Mick Wallace, Murphy was criticised for saying that ISIS members were a “big part” of Ireland’s migrant population. In the same interview, Murphy said: “We also have to take into account the possibility that Isis have already manipulated children as young as three or four.” Murphy went on to apologise for the comments but did eventually claim she was the subject of a “character assassination in the media”. 

Fine Gael ended up deselecting her as a candidate for the 2020 general election. You can tell they really meant it, too, because they waited nearly five whole years before making her Ceann Comhairle.

During Covid-19, Murphy also called into question the efficacy of vaccines, saying that a vaccinated individual is “every bit as likely to transmit this virus as a non-vaccinated person,” which seemed kind of like a bad argument, since a vaccinated person was significantly less likely to have the damn thing in the first place. 

Murphy was described by Politico this week as a ‘maverick ex-trucker’ which is, to be fair, undeniably the most enviable description I’ve ever heard of anyone ever. Despite the impartiality demanded of Murphy’s new role however, it will be expected of her to truly unlearn her trucker ways and move to the middle of the road.

RIP it up and start again

In one of the most impressively Scroogey moves in recent memory, it was announced this week that your parents’ favourite website RIP.ie would begin charging funeral directors €100 per listing as of 1 January. Naturally, this cost will be passed on to the consumer (‘consumer’ in this case being a tasteful catch-all term for widows, bereaved children, heartbroken parents, etc). It is a stark reminder that even at our most vulnerable, there are those to whom we are nothing more but walking, talking, weeping wallets. 

While this is the kind of move one might expect from a faceless hedge fund, nakedly prioritising profits over public service, it feels all the more grimy that RIP.ie is actually owned and operated at the top level by the Irish Times Group. While the Irish Times did only make a small profit last year, its revenues stood at €115 million. Not too shabby, and one can’t help but feel that there should be another way for them to make money than explicitly profiting off, quite literally, death.

On a business level, the move might also end up proving unwise. There is nothing high-tech or hard to replicate about the RIP.ie website. Anybody halfway proficient in coding could probably set up a similar site, charge half what the Irish Times is charging and put RIP.ie out of business. It also wouldn’t be hard to improve upon RIP.ie’s offering. All you’d have to do to upgrade RIP.ie is include a little Bebo-style flashbox made commemorating the dead. 

Or you could simply submit your death notices, obituaries and funeral details to me, and I’ll include them at the bottom of Surrealing in the Years. A tenner a go. I’m no Scrooge.