A pro-Israel rally outside the Israeli Embassy in Ireland last Sunday. Photo: Irish Christian Friends of Israel.

JNS.org – The upper house of the Irish parliament, known as the Seanad or Senate, is set to be recalled from summer recess to debate the Israel-Hamas conflict amid growing calls to expel the Israeli ambassador to the country.

A number of politicians from the minority left-wing Irish Labor party have called for the government to consider expelling the Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Mondai, over the growing number of Palestinian civilian casualties, the Irish Examiner reported.

But the Irish government, controlled by the center-right Fine Gael party, also recently decided to abstain from a U.N. Human Rights Council whose eventual outcome was to approve the launching of an investigation into purported Israeli human rights violations in Gaza.

Despite the growing anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland, nearly 175 Irish Christians and Jews turned out for a pro-Israel rally outside the country’s Israeli Embassy last Sunday.

“Ireland is very pro-Palestinian, mainly because [the Irish people] identify with the plight of those who are suffering and images of wounded children and adults that have appeared on the news every night. I think the Palestinians are winning the propaganda war,” Paddy Monaghan— president of Irish Christian Friends of Israel (ICFI), a group that helped organize the rally—told JNS.org.

“Israel is too slow about highlighting the impact on their communities of the rocket fire from Gaza. They tend to share statistics rather than show suffering,” Monaghan added.

Ahead of the debate in the Irish Senate, the ICFI has issued an action alert to its members, encouraging them to write to their politicians to oppose calls for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.