The Israeli embassy in Ireland suggested on Tuesday in Facebook and Twitter posts that Adolf Hitler would be happy with the United Nations, which it described as “a tool against Israel.”

The latest post from the gaffe-prone embassy follows its post last December, reported in Haaretz by Barak Ravid, that Mary and Jesus, had they been alive today, would have been lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians.

The Christmas post was later deleted, an official apology was issued and the embassy’s Facebook page was temporarily taken off line. The Washington Post asked the embassy at the time whether it planned to change the way the page was operated, but never got a reply.

The latest post shared an article from the Jewish site aish.com, written by a Sudanese refugee, which harshly chastised the UN for going after Israel while other, greater oppressors of human rights remain unpunished. “By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale,” the post quoted from the article. “The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier”.

Although the words originally appeared in the linked article, by quoting (and adding, as an introduction, “It’s from 2011 but it’s always relevant.”) the embassy can be regarded as endorsing the message.

Israel’s embassy in Ireland has a unique social media presence. Before the Christmas episode, which created an online uproar among Christians, the embassy featured a cartoon in which an Irish-looking character gave the finger and said “Feck Off Hamas.”

“The person who leads this provocative line in the embassy in Dublin is not only Ambassador Boaz Modai, but also his wife, Nurit Tinari-Modai, who serves as deputy head of mission,” Barak Ravid wrote in Haaretz after the December post. “Tinari-Modai made it into the headlines when she carried out a provocation during a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Dublin last year. A few months ago, Israel’s Channel 10 published an email that Tinari Modai sent to senior Foreign Ministry officials in which she claimed that Israelis living in Ireland who criticize Israeli policy in the West Bank do it partly because of their sexual orientation. Tinari Modai even suggested that the embassy should act against Israelis in Ireland who criticize Israel, targeting them personally by making sensitive information about them public”.

For the record, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor, when he took power in 1933. It’s highly doubtful that he would have been happy with the international body’s peace-keeping efforts.

Open gallery view The embassy then apologized for suggesting that Hitler would have liked the UN. Credit: AP