Fine Gael health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill held a meeting with a former Israeli spy at the taoiseach’s offices last May when she was junior defence minister.
Dublin-based Inbal Goldberger served as an intelligence officer for almost a decade in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and a notorious Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit accused of human rights abuses.
Carroll MacNeill’s meeting with the self-described “secret agent by training” took place less than two months after The Ditch – without naming Goldberger – reported that the cybersecurity professional was one of 21 Israeli former intelligence agents living in Ireland.
‘Proud of contribution to intelligence collection during 2003 Iraq war’
Inbal Goldberger was a commanding officer (lieutenant) in the Israel Defense Forces Unit 8200 intelligence corps from 1998 to 2003.
Goldberger was “commander of (the) intelligence interception section” and a “direct commander of 30 soldiers” during a five-year stint at the unit, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The former spy said she was “mostly proud of (her) contribution to intelligence efforts during the 2003 Iraq war”. The words “mostly proud” were however removed from her LinkedIn profile shortly after The Ditch’s March 2024 report on former Israeli intelligence operatives working in Ireland.
In September 2014 more than 30 IDF reservists issued a public letter outlining human rights abuses within Unit 8200. Intelligence gathered by Unit 8200, the letter read, "is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself".
Goldberger landed an intelligence officer role at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office in 2003, where she “lead (sic) technological collaboration with international allies” until 2005, according to her LinkedIn profile.
After a three-year spell as a broadcaster for Tel Aviv Radio in 2008, Goldberger returned to an intelligence role with the IDF’s Unit 8200 – “probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world” – where she remained until 2010.
Goldberger moved to Ireland in 2014 to take up an IT role at Google’s Dublin offices. She left Google in 2022 to become vice president of trust and safety at ActiveFence, a company that “protects online platforms and their users from the widest spectrum of harms and abuses”.
Since May 2024 – the same month she met with Carroll MacNeill – Goldberger is a self-employed digital regulation advisor “pioneering the establishment of Ireland’s first Trusted Flagger entity in compliance with the Digital Services Act”, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She is a former working group member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety and was appointed to the advisory council of the World Jewish Congress Technology and Human Rights Institute in June 2024.
In May 2024 the former spy met the then junior defence minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill at Simon Harris’s Department of an Taoiseach.
The pair discussed “how the government can help reduce online harms such as antisemitism”, according to Goldberger’s LinkedIn post, which included a photograph of her wearing a Department of an Taoiseach visitor badge alongside Carroll MacNeill.
“Thank you Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD for an open and candid conversation,” wrote Goldberger in her May 2024 LinkedIn post.
Health minister Carroll MacNeill faced opposition criticism in 2022 for inviting a former IDF soldier to Leinster House as part of her efforts to revive the Oireachtas Friends of Israel group.
Goldberger and Carroll MacNeill have been contacted for comment.
