Israel: Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy on Sunday hit out at Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar over his statement on the release of nine-year-old Irish-Israeli captive Emily Hand.
In a statement posted on X on Saturday, Leo Varadkar said an “innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned” and “we breathe a massive sign of relief”.
“Our prayers have been answered,” Varadkar said.
Responding to Varadkar’s X post, Levy said Hand wasn’t “lost” but had been “brutally abducted by the death squads that massacred her neighbours”.
“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,” Levy wrote.
“Without Israel’s military pressure on Hamas, which Ireland shamefully called ‘something approaching revenge,’ little Emily Hand would still be a hostage of Hamas. It’s not that Hamas ‘was blind, but now it sees’ (if the above statement is an allusion to Amazing Grace),” Levy added.
Israel and Ireland unusually have strained ties. After Hamas launched a surprise assault in Israel on October 7, Varakdar decried the attack, during which over 1,200 people were killed and 240 were taken hostages. However, days later, the Irish prime minister became one of the few European officials to raise the alarm, Al Jazeera reported.
“Israel doesn’t have the right to do wrong,” Varakdar said in something of a play on words as most European leaders were stressing Israel’s “right” to self-defence during its bombing campaign on Gaza, the enclave ruled by Hamas.
Irish President Michael D Higgins, whose role is largely ceremonial, has also been critical of Israel, accusing it of reducing international law around the protection of civilians to “tatters”.
“This is how you describe a little girl who went missing during a stroll in a forest, then gets discovered by a friendly hiker. Not a girl brutally abducted by death squads that brutally massacred her neighbors. But this explains the extent of Ireland’s contribution: prayers,” Levy wrote in another post after Emily’s release.
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