An international Jewish lobby group has condemned Ireland for sponsoring a new United Nations resolution on religious intolerance which refrains from mentioning anti-Semitism.
In a letter sent yesterday to the President, Mrs McAleese, the Paris-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre said Ireland was itself engaging in an act "tantamount to anti-Semitism" by excluding reference in the motion to the persecution of Jews.
The centre's international liaison director, Dr Shimon Samuels, told The Irish Times that it was only targeting Ireland over the resolution because it was the principal sponsor.
"We cannot understand why Ireland is taking this position. This is at a time when anti-Semitism has grown in leaps and bounds across western Europe," he said.
A spokeswoman for the President said the letter would be passed on to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
A Department spokeswoman said it would be "inappropriate" to single out specific instances of intolerance against a particular religion in a "thematic" resolution which addressed all forms of religious intolerance.
She added, however, Ireland "strongly condemned" any and all instances of anti-Semitism, and supported the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism which agreed anti-Semitism was a form of racism.
But Dr Samuels claimed "Ireland is striking out on its own", adding "the acceptance of 'anti-Semitism' in a similar resolution at this year's UN Commission on Human Rights prevailed over the objection of Ireland."
He noted the centre had no objection to the resolution referring to other forms of discrimination, such as Islamophobia. The letter, jointly signed by Dr Samuels and the centre's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, added: "The exclusion of anti-Semitism from the typology of religious intolerance would be tantamount to an act of anti-Semitism."
