A Dublin hotel recently canceled a large booking after management learned that guests in the 70 rooms would be attending a conference on combating antisemitism, according to a leader of the Jewish community in Ireland.
In a speech on Tuesday addressing conference delegates, Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said that the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin had revoked the booking with no explanation after he explained the purpose of the gathering.
The allegation caused a stir, particularly after the World Jewish Congress posted about it on Wednesday. The group, along with the European Commission and others, organizes the semiannual meeting of Jewish community leaders and government envoys, the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism conference, in different international locations and held it in Ireland this week with Irish government support.
The World Jewish Congress called on the hotel to provide a “clear explanation.”
The hotel did not respond to an email from The New York Times on Wednesday, and the general manager did not immediately respond to an email or phone call on Thursday. That has left unchallenged Mr. Cohen’s account, which has generated online and international debate and headlines, coming as antisemitic incidents in Ireland and elsewhere have risen in recent years.
Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Wednesday that the cancellation was an example of an “ambient antisemitism” that he said had increased amid outrage over Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, underscoring the need to combat bias and hold gatherings like the one in Dublin.
After his event manager sought conference rooms at the hotel in addition to the already confirmed guest rooms, Mr. Cohen said he had met in person with its general manager. It was then, Mr. Cohen said, that he told her the conference was about combating antisemitism and would include representatives of governments and Jewish communities who would be meeting with leaders of the Irish government.
The general manager asked “the most peculiar question,” he said: whether the Israeli military was in any way involved.
The Israeli military had no role in the conference, Mr. Cohen said he told her. Asked to comment, the Israeli military said that it had “found no relationship” with the conference.
Mr. Cohen said that the hotel’s general manager told him she would need to speak to her superiors and that the next day, the hotel declined additional bookings by email, without explanation. When his event planner followed up about the guest rooms that he says were previously confirmed, the hotel responded in another email canceling the booking without providing a reason.
Mr. Cohen argued that anger at Israel was being used to justify both subtle and overt bias against Jews in Ireland and beyond. Relations with the hotel “only turned sour after the mention of Jews and antisemitism,” he said.
He said that the revocation violated Irish anti-discrimination laws, but the hotel has not made public its account of what happened.
Deborah Lipstadt, a historian who served as the U.S. special envoy on combating antisemitism during the Biden administration, has attended the conferences on multiple occasions, but not the one this week in Dublin. She described the events generally as “very benign gatherings” of people — not all of whom are Jewish — with similar portfolios who brief each other on developments where they work. She said they have no connection to the Israeli government.
Ms. Lipstadt and other experts on antisemitism say that intensifying opposition to Israel’s policies has been fueling anger and incidents against Jews worldwide, as many people conflate Jewish people with the Jewish state.
Global data on antisemitic incidents in 2025, compiled based on police reports and other sources by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry this year, revealed “worrying trends,” the group wrote. Twenty people were killed in four antisemitic attacks in three countries — Australia, the United States and Canada — the highest number of casualties in a single year for over three decades.
“Across the globe, the number of antisemitic incidents remained dozens of percent higher than in the period before the war” in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the report found.
Ireland has about 5 million people, of whom about 2,500 identified as Jewish in the 2016 census. In the first half of this year, there were more than 140 discriminatory incidents, including physical, verbal and digital attacks and harassment, among others, according to reporting from the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland. The group said it had compiled the report because there was no Irish government mechanism in place to track antisemitism.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, who attended the conference this week, said that he and other delegates “came to Ireland specifically to ring the alarm bell” about antisemitism. They met on Tuesday with Micheál Martin, Ireland’s prime minister, but did not discuss the hotel incident, which would be revealed later, at a reception at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Neither the prime minister’s office nor the Department of Foreign Affairs responded immediately to requests for comment. The conference participants found rooms elsewhere.
Israel’s foreign ministry weighed in on Wednesday, accusing Ireland of hypocrisy for failing to condemn the incident.
Ireland has been highly critical of Israel and its prosecution of the war in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 75,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict. Ireland also formally recognized the State of Palestine in 2024, drawing the ire of some Israeli leaders.
Israel recalled its ambassador to Ireland in the immediate aftermath and later that year announced it was closing the embassy in Dublin, citing “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.”
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