Ireland Wouldn’t Know Antisemitism if It Hit It on the Arse

Reports of vile behaviour from what is arguably the most antisemitic country outside of the Middle East

Monday was Holocaust Memorial Day.

It should have been a day during which all victims of the Holocaust were remembered; for the atrocities that happened back in 1940s Europe, the most horrific and most documented crime against humanity that exists.

It should also have been a day that honoured the survival of the Jewish race against all the odds, for which we Jews will forever be in gratitude to the allies.

What it should not have been was an opportunity to apply the historical events that became the Holocaust to today in order to delegitimise the State of Israel or the rights of Jewish people to have a voice. No matter what your thoughts about the establishment of Israel or the endless conflict in the Middle East, Holocaust Memorial Day is not about that and should be honoured entirely separately.

However, that’s not what happened in Ireland at Dublin’s Mansion House, when President Michael Higgins made an inflammatory speech following sixteen months of antisemitic behaviour, and denial.

Ireland seems oblivious to its own hypocrisy

I don’t know if it’s a case of too many pints of Murphy’s or that the population is living in its own leprechaun world, but for some reason, the Irish as a collective people cannot see past their own antisemitic arses.

This display completely dehumanised this Israeli professor - a Holocaust researcher, no less - who herself explains that she has always opposed Israel’s military actions in Gaza. But no one asked her. Because she’s Israeli. Because being Israeli - read Jew - to the Irish means she has no right to speak on human rights or the horrors of the worst genocide in documented history.

Is she, a Jew, qualified to speak on the war that sought the eradication of the entire Jewish race? Is she, someone who has spent years studying the details of this horrific crime against humanity, qualified to speak on the very acts of dehumanisation that occurred?

Yes and yes.

While Michael Higgins, who specified that no Israeli was permitted to speak, was by his very actions, exhibiting that precise dehumanisation and cancelling of rights. Prior to this, he has claimed that “antisemitism in Ireland is a PR stunt by the Israeli embassy”. This despite the fact that he has gone to every length to incriminate Israel, joining South Africa’s condemnation and accusation of genocide at the International Court of Justice and petitioning the ICC to expand the definition of genocide to incriminate Israel, despite the obviously nuanced nature of this vile war that Hamas started.

In addition, by denying rather than acknowledging the antisemitism that Jews themselves testify to having experienced, he has enabled the antisemites and encouraged their actions to continue freely.

The Israelis present at the speech chose a very calculated, silent and non-disruptive form of protest. For that, they were aggressively dragged out of the hall.

Meanwhile, every single week, marches calling for the annihilation of Israel, waving the flags of terrorist organisations who call for the death of all Jews, disrupting daily life for all, condemning Jews, and attacks on Jewish businesses, have been allowed to fill the streets of Dublin for fifteen months straight. Yet these supposed ‘anti-war’ demonstrations are the very opposite of peace.

---

Ireland and the Irish government has repeatedly tried to claim that the accusations of antisemitism directed towards it are unjustified. Yet time after time after time, we see evidence to the contrary.

This hijacking of an event that was supposed to commemorate the Holocaust and honour those whose lives were brutally taken from them is just the latest in a long series of Ireland’s blatant dismissal and dehumanisation of Jews and Israelis.

And yet the denial goes on, they keep on living in Leprechaun Land, and apparently wouldn’t even know antisemitism if it hit them on the arse.