Margaret Connolly, sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly and an activist from the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, detained by Israeli forces after their vessels were intercepted in international waters in the Mediterranean, disembarks a plane upon arrival at Istanbul Airport, Turkey, May 21, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Ireland’s clash with Israel widened from a cultural boycott to a diplomatic fight over trade within a matter of days, after Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin called for a review of EU-Israel trade ties over the “abduction” of Irish citizens aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla, while Irish President Catherine Connolly said she was “very proud” of her sister, one of the activists intercepted at sea.

The confrontation came days after RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, escalated the country’s Eurovision boycott over Israel’s participation by choosing not to air Saturday night’s final at all.

The flotilla dispute gave Ireland’s political leaders a new confrontation with Israel. Martin condemned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir after footage appeared to show the Israeli minister taunting detained activists, some of whom were shouting “Free Palestine.” 

Martin slammed Ben-Gvir for his “disgusting” and “disgraceful” behavior. 

“It’s a blight on the Israeli government and other European leaders are likewise calling this out,” Martin said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that while it was within Israel’s rights to stop “provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters,” the way Ben-Gvir dealt with the activists was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”

Martin said on Wednesday he would seek support from European partners to revisit trade relations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

“It’s no longer tenable that it would be business as usual with Israel, given its scant regard for European Union citizens. The right to protest is a sacred one, within any democracy. The flotilla was in international waters and people were essentially abducted by the Israeli government on the high seas,” Martin said.

More than a dozen Irish citizens were among the activists detained after Israeli commandos intercepted the flotilla, which was trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. They included Margaret Connolly, a physician and the sister of President Catherine Connolly.

The president said that she was “very proud” of her sister’s anti-Israel activism but added that she was also “very worried” for her welfare. 

Flotilla activists released the now-familiar prerecorded “kidnapped” video from Margaret Connolly, part of a genre made famous by Greta Thunberg and other flotilla activists who prepare dramatic arrest messages in advance in case Israeli forces stop them at sea.

“If you are watching this video, it means I have been kidnapped from my boat in the flotilla by the Israeli occupying forces, and I’m now being held illegally in an Israeli prison,” she said, holding her Irish passport and wearing a shirt with a map of Ireland. “Palestine’s struggle is the moral compass of our time. It is what makes us human. The Palestinians will save our humanity.”

Israel said the flotilla had “come to an end” after more than 50 vessels were intercepted and 430 activists were transferred to Israel to meet consular representatives before deportation. The Foreign Ministry described the flotilla as “a PR stunt at the service of Hamas” and said Israel would not allow a breach of what it called the lawful naval blockade on Gaza. 

Flotilla organizers accused Israeli forces of firing during several interceptions, while Israel said only non-lethal warning measures were used and no live ammunition was fired at activists.

In videos circulated online, flotilla activists accused Israel of jamming communications by blasting music over their radio channels. In one clip, an activist accuses Israeli authorities of endangering the boats by preventing mayday calls with Britney Spears’s “Oops!… I Did It Again.” In another, “Michelle,” the song from Israel’s Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan, is heard over a flotilla vessel’s radio.

Bettan finished second in the Eurovision, which is the most watched non-sport live broadcast in the world, with 200 million viewers. Five countries including Ireland boycotted the contest because of Israel’s participation, though some non-participating countries still aired the final. RTÉ chose not to, airing instead a Eurovision-related episode of popular sitcom “Father Ted.” 

Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder criticized RTÉ, saying several people told him they had written to the broadcaster about its Eurovision stance. 

“A national broadcaster has a responsibility to maintain impartiality and reflect the diversity of public opinion, rather than align itself with a particular political posture,” he told The Algemeiner.

The Eurovision boycott had deepened fears among Irish Jews that Israel was being singled out not only for criticism but for exclusion, Weider said. 

“There is a strong sense that the boycott was not simply an expression of disagreement or criticism, but part of a broader attempt to delegitimize Israel’s very place within the international community,” Wieder said.

Some of the loudest voices calling for boycotts “speak constantly about the fears, trauma, and human suffering of Palestinians while having little or nothing to say about those experienced by Israelis,” Wieder added.

But he also said that the reaction inside Ireland was more complicated than the official boycott suggested, noting that the Irish public vote gave significant support to Israel in each of the past two years, “demonstrating that public sentiment is far more nuanced than is often portrayed.”

Wieder also criticized RTÉ over an earlier controversy involving Patrick Kielty, host of “The Late Late Show,” who referred to Gaza while discussing antisemitic stabbing attacks in London. Kielty said, “You’ve got attacks on the Jewish community, and the backdrop of that is obviously the horrors in Gaza,” prompting critics to argue that antisemitic violence was being politically contextualized rather than condemned on its own terms.

RTÉ defended Kielty, saying that “as someone who lost his father to a terrorist attack, Patrick has always been empathic, measured, and sensitive on such matters.”

Wieder said the issue was not that Kielty mentioned context at all.

“Of course it’s true that Israel–Palestine may influence or motivate some of those who seek to harm Jews around the world. We should not pretend otherwise,” he said. “The issue is the instinctive framing.”

“Violence against Jewish people must be allowed to stand morally in its own right before immediately being folded into a wider political discussion,” Wieder said.

He said Irish public discourse often treats Jewish suffering as something requiring immediate geopolitical explanation. “There is an instinct to search immediately for geopolitical context in a way that simply would not happen after attacks on Muslims, black people, or Asians,” he said.

Paul James Kearns, an Irish-Israeli journalist, pointed to another incident from the same “Late Late Show” exchange. Boy George, speaking about the London stabbing attack and the abuse he received after expressing concern for Jewish friends, asked the studio audience, “Do you know any Jewish people?” His question was met with silence. 

Writing in the Times of Israel, Kearns said the silence was not plausible as an answer. In a country of about 5 million people, with roughly 3,000 Jews and 1,500 Israelis, the odds that nobody in a 200-person studio audience knew a Jewish person were “vanishingly small — close to zero.” The point, he argued, was not that Ireland has no contact with Jews, but that “even acknowledging a connection to a Jewish person, and especially to an Israeli, carries an unspoken social cost.”

Kearns also pointed to the silence that greeted a recent report on antisemitism in Ireland, including, most notably, the absence of any public response from either the president or the prime minister. 

The report – the first-ever on antisemitic incidents in Ireland — was released by the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland in March and recorded 143 incidents in the six months between July 2025 and January 2026. 

Wieder said the report did not show that antisemitism had become a daily reality for every Irish Jew, but that it surfaced “often enough, and in ordinary enough settings” that it could not be dismissed as marginal. 

“This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should,” Wieder said.