A group of 22 Republican and one Democrat House members penned a letter to Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who leads the Irish government, decrying a bill that would boycott Israeli products from Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
“The proposed legislation represents a discriminatory move by Ireland to economically target Israel and demonize the world’s only Jewish state,” the members, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), wrote on Monday, the day before the second anniversary of Oct. 7.
The Irish bill “creates a blatant double standard toward the Jewish state by singling out Israel while ignoring other territorial disputes around the world” and is “an attempt to isolate Israel as a pariah,” the members of Congress wrote.
Resolution of local territorial disputes ought to come through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, “not by divisive, one-sided political theater from foreign parliaments,” the legislators stated.
The Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Act of 2025 would ban importing goods from Israeli settlements beyond the so-called Green Line. Irish business leaders have reportedly opposed the bill.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) led 15 other House Republicans in a letter to Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, in August, urging him to review whether Ireland’s potential boycott of goods from Judea and Samaria violates U.S. law.
The Irish government is preparing to lessen the scope of the boycott to a limited set of goods, worth less than $250,000 annually, Reuters reported on Friday.
The members of Congress wrote that they are “deeply concerned” about Ireland claiming publicly that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and urging the International Court of Justice, a U.N. agency in The Hague, to “modify its test for recognizing genocidal intent.”
“We strongly reject Ireland’s effort to distort the international legal standards related to this most serious crime in order to accuse Israel of committing it,” the congressmen wrote. “We also object to Ireland’s ongoing dismissal of the substantial evidence that Israel’s intention in Gaza is to eliminate the security threat posed by Hamas, while Hamas intentionally uses innocent civilians as human shields.”
Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, stated that “both the proposed Occupied Territories Bill and joining the ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide set Ireland apart from its European neighbors and threaten its relationship with America and American Jews.”
“As an organization that has been in frequent dialogue with Irish diplomats, we too have been troubled by these recent developments,” he stated.
