THE IRISH AMBASSADOR to Israel has been summoned by the Israeli foreign minister to be reprimanded over comments Taoiseach Leo Varadkar made over the release of Irish-Israeli hostage Emily Hand

On X, formerly Twitter, last night Varadkar said: “This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.”

In a reply to Varadkar, a spokesperson for the Israeli government Eylon Levy said: “Emily Hand wasn’t ‘lost’. She was brutally abducted by the death squads that massacred her neighbors.”

“She wasn’t ‘found’. Hamas knew where she was all along and cynically held her as a hostage. And Hamas didn’t answer your prayers. It answered Israel’s military pressure.”

    • Striker@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      464·
      11 months ago

      The funny thing is Varadkar is trying desperately to be a neutral as possible but the Israeli government is literally making it impossible. They are trying to get him to take a more hardline pro zionist stance but there’s very little zionist political power in Ireland. He knows he’ll lose lots of voters if he takes a zionist stance. Israel can’t do shit.

  • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
    143·
    11 months ago

    Israel still going out of its way to make itself look as shit as possible.

  • cyd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    11 months ago

    Israel seems to be taking pointers on international diplomacy from the People’s Republic of China. Weird, I always pegged Israel as being pretty savvy at PR. This “wolf warrior diplomacy” style truculence is totally counterproductive for them, as it is for China.

  • steventhedev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    118·
    11 months ago

    At first I thought this might be Israel making lots of noise over a potentially ambiguous translation: Lost as in “dead” vs. lost as in “someone who doesn’t know where they are”. The fragment “…who was lost has now been found…” makes it pretty clear the intent was very much the latter.

    He’ll probably claim that linguistic thing as spin, and then deflect any further criticism.