Irish Sport for Palestine, 1815 F.C. and 1916 Societies have come together to call for Herzog Park in Rathgar to be renamed Hind Rajab Park, and the pitch to be called the Bakr Family Football Pitch.

The park is currently named after Chaim Herzog who grew up in Dublin and later emigrated to Mandatory Palestine where he joined the Haganah Zionist Paramilitary Group in 1935. Herzog played a role in suppressing the Palestinian Revolution and served in the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) after the Nakba where he rose to the rank of Major-General.  He was the president of Israel from 1983-1993. His most famous political act came in 1975 while he was Israel’s ambassador to the UN when he tore up a UN resolution that equated zionism with racism. His son, Isaac Herzog, is the current President of Israel and he visited the Rathgar Park with his family in 2018. Isaac Herzog has continuously sanctioned the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In December 2023 he was photographed signing artillery shells before they were fired into civilian populations in Gaza.  

The Herzog family has been complicit in the oppression, displacement, murder and genocide inflicted on the Palestinian people since before the 1948 Nakba to the present genocide in Gaza. A public park in Dublin city should not be named after them!

We aim to permanently rename the park in solidarity with the Palestinian people, in rejection of racist Zionism, long supported and espoused by the Herzog’s.

Hind Rajab is the name chosen to remember a 5-year-old little girl, Hind, killed by the IOF on January 29th, 2024, along with 6 of her relatives. She is one of more than 14,500 children who’ve been killed in Gaza by Israel since October. Bakr Family Football Pitch is to remember the 4 young Bakr boys who in 2014 were targeted and killed by the IOF as they played football on the beach in GAZA. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamach.