16-07-2025
US Ambassador to Israel official calls on Ireland to 'sober up' over OTB
The US Ambassador to Israel has criticised the Occupied Territories Bill, calling on Ireland to "sober up".
The bill would prohibit trade between Ireland and Israel's illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It was scrutinised yesterday by the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and was introduced by Independent Senator Frances Black.
Mike Huckabee described the bill as "so stupid" and questioned if it could be attributed to an act of "diplomatic intoxication".
"Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness," he said in a post on social media platform X.
Mr Huckabee said the bill, known as the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Bill, "will harm Arabs as much as Israelis".
He urged Ireland to "call the Israel Foreign Ministry and say you're sorry!"
His comments come after the bill was scruntinised at the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday during which former minister for justice Alan Shatter likened it to legislation passed in Germany in the 1930s.
, and replicated the type of legislation initiated by the Nazis.
However, Committee chair John Lahart of Fianna Fáil said that a claim made during the proceedings that the bill is anti-Semitic was "hugely hurtful and slanderous".
Labour TD Duncan Smith said there was a failure to recognise that the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal.
"That's a fundamental point of divergence," he said, adding Israel was "not the only example of Ireland deploying such a bill".
In 2014, he said, an "identical bill was passed in Irish law prohibiting trade in goods and services with Russian-occupied Ukraine".
