Trinity College Dublin. Photo: www.tcd.ie.

The Israeli Embassy in Dublin is “concerned” by a “disturbing trend” of local initiatives targeting the Jewish state, a spokesperson told The Algemeiner on Thursday, after Trinity College Dublin (TCD) was announced as the location for an upcoming pro-BDS academic conference.

The spokesperson said the scheduling of a meeting of a group called “Academics for Palestine” (AfP) for the week before Rosh Hashanah in September was is only the latest in a number of upsetting incidents in the Irish capital, including a “one-sided motion put forward by a Dublin City Council member to fly a Palestinian flag over Dublin City Hall during the month of May [to coincide with Israel’s Independence Day].”

The spokesperson said the AfP conference — which will feature a keynote speech by Steven Salaita, who was fired from his post at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 after he made antisemitic comments on Twitter — was reminiscent of a similar gathering held earlier this month at University College Cork (UCC), during which Israeli Mossad agents were accused of “cheering” the 9/11 attacks. The spokesperson called the UCC event “an antisemitic circus.”

“[There is] significant cause for concern that yet another Irish university will be used as a forum for the espousal of hate against the state of Israel,” the spokesperson said.

In February, the embassy was similarly “horrified” that TCD cancelled a talk by the Israeli ambassador at the last minute, due to a student protest outside the lecture hall.

“Ultimately these initiatives do nothing to further the cause of peace in our troubled region but only seek to harm the good relations between Israel and Ireland,” the spokesperson told The Algemeiner.

Last week, the TCD student government rejected a motion for a “college-wide boycott of the state of Israel,” a student paper reported.

The TCD press office did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment on Thursday.