Campaign calls for council to remove former Israel President Chaim Herzog’s name from a Rathgar Park

The green cage around the pitch in Herzog Park in Rathgar was decorated in Palestinian flags on Sunday.

On the pitch at 1pm, 14 players – grown-ups and kids – were split into a red team and green team.

They were an hour into a six-hour marathon game of football, organised by 1815 F.C. – a community football club, which plays in public pitches and parks across the city weekly –  and Irish Sport for Palestine, the latest action in a campaign to get the council to change the name of the park.

It was named after Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel, between 1983 and 1993, who was born and raised in Ireland, and who was a staunch Zionist.

1815 F.C. had avoided the pitch for a few years, said Gav Fahy, director of the club.

“It had been in the back of our minds to do something. But obviously, with the genocide going on since October, it made sense to do something,” he said.

The campaign is calling on Dublin City Council to rename the park in memory of Hind Rajab, a five-year old girl who was killed by the Israeli Defence Forces on 29 January.

As part of the protest, campaigners had hidden all references to Herzog. A Palestinian flag cloaked the stone monument at the park entrance celebrating a visit by members of his family in 2018.

A blue plastic sign, fixed to the park gates, read, “Pháirc Hind Rajab, Hind Rajab Park”.

But their campaign has faced hurdles. Dublin City Council’s 2017 commemorative naming policy limits who city landmarks can be named after.

An individual must be dead for at least 20 years before they can be commemorated, and the policy does not allow for city parks these days to be named in honour of individuals.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council did not comment when asked if it would consider this proposal.

A push to rename

Herzog Park used to be called Orwell Quarry Park.

It sits on a former quartz and limestone quarry bought by the council in 1954, says the Dublin City Council website.

In 1995, it was renamed Herzog Park, to mark the tri-millennium of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the website says.

Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast, the son of Isaac Herzog, the first chief rabbi of Ireland.

He was raised in Dublin, and studied at Wesley College secondary school in Sandyford, before emigrating to Israel in 1935, according to the Israeli embassy’s website.

Herzog served in the Haganah paramilitary group fighting against the Palestinian uprising in 1936 to 1939 against British colonial rule and British support of the Zionist movement.

He went on to fight in the British Army in Europe as a tank commander during World War II, participating in the liberation of several Nazi concentration camps. He then returned to Palestine and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

In November 1975, while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Herzog defended the Zionist movement after the UN adopted a resolution which determined that it is a form of racial discrimination, according to the UN’s official general assembly report.

“For Zionism is nothing more – and nothing less – than the Jewish people’s sense of origin and destination in the land, linked eternally with its name,” he told the assembly, before concluding his speech by tearing up the resolution, footage from the Israel State Archives show.

That position is one of the reasons why the campaign is calling for the park to be renamed, Fahy says.

Campaigners are conscious that Rathgar is an area with a strong local Jewish-Irish history, says Rebecca O’Keefe, a basketballer and member of Irish Sport for Palestine (ISP). “A lot of the names of the streets have a Jewish connection.”

Not far from the park is Zion Road, and Rathgar is also home to the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, Dublin Hebrew Congregation and the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland – in Herzog House, on Zion Road.

The group is in discussions with a coalition of independent councillors to deliver the idea and will also be engaging with locals in the area, says Joanne McDonald, who founded ISP. “Whatever about what we rename it, Herzog being removed is an absolute must.”

There are a lot of other Jewish people in Irish history who the park could be named after but who aren’t Zionists, says Fahy, citing the painter Estella Solomons as one possible alternative. “But Hind Rajab was chosen, and we’re going to keep it.”

Naming procedures

Dublin City Council’s commemorative naming policy currently poses an issue to the campaign.

The person proposed for commemoration must have been born or lived in Dublin, or have a strong connection to the city, it says.

Nominees have to either be dead for 20 years or have passed the centenary of their birth, it also says.

But, Chaim Herzog didn’t die until 1997, two years after the park was named after him, Rebecca O’Keefe says. “There’s precedent there, basically.”

The council’s current naming policy, however, was only approved by the council in June 2017.

A second possible option, drawn up by independent councillors, including Cieran Perry, Mannix Flynn and Nial Ring, has encountered a similar roadblock.

In May, before the local elections, 10 independent councillors, working with the 1916 Societies, proposed an alternative to Hind Rajab – given the 20-year rule.

The council should rename the park after Edward Said, the Palestinian-American intellectual and activist, they said.

It was going to be an emergency motion at the final monthly council meeting on 13 March, independent councillor Cieran Perry says. “But it was ruled out of order.”

This was because council policy also says a city park cannot be named after an individual, Perry says.

As of 16 July, a petition launched on 20 April in support of renaming the park after Rajab has gathered 2,098 signatures.

Campaigners are trying to secure a meeting with council officials, O’Keefe says. “It could be a good campaign, because it’s a winnable thing and a good action of solidarity.”