A number of years ago, I visited the old ghetto in Venice, Europe’s oldest, established at the beginning of the 16th century. It still retains the original five synagogues that catered for both Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions that had settled in Venice. Our guide was passionate about his Venetian, Jewish heritage and proud of the multiculturalism of his city.
“You see,” he said, “Europe is a country but Venice is a continent, a place where you will find no anti-Semitism”. However, of all the sites I visited in Venice, the Jewish quarter stood alone in requiring visitors to pass through airport-style scanners.
For Jews in the diaspora, enhanced security measures have become necessary and commonplace for decades, in synagogues, schools or anywhere that members of the community choose to congregate. Hardened doors, surveillance teams, armed guards – no other minority has to endure such circumstances in democratic societies. Jews have the equal right to live freely, but the current status quo represents an abject failure of democracy.
Anti-Semitism whirrs constantly, either in parallel to, or embedded within domestic politics. Globally, there isn’t a government anywhere that has succeeded in eliminating this unique form of racism. Part of the difficulty in tackling anti-Semitism lies in understanding its protean nature. With its origins as the world’s oldest conspiracy theory, singling out Jews as devious, money-obsessed Christ killers, anti-Semitism fuels the left/right extremities of politics, the explosive rise in Islamic fundamentalism, the ethno-nationalism of the new breed of populists and those who hide behind a rabid hatred of Zionism, without any understanding of what this term means.
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With barely 48 hours passed since the massacre on Bondi Beach, in which an alleged father-and-son team indiscriminately gunned down 15 members of the Jewish community – ranging in age from a 10-year-old girl to a Holocaust survivor in his late 80s – those who point to the situation in Gaza by way of explanation are victim blaming. Jews have been massacred for being Jews long before the state of Israel was founded in 1948. The alleged gunmen had one motive – homicidal anti-Semitism, which is being laundered through geopolitical arguments that promote Israel as the cause rather than the pretext.
Bondi is one of many violent attacks on Jews – two Israeli embassy staff were murdered in Washington; synagogues have been attacked in France and Germany; an attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur saw a man drive a car into pedestrians before stabbing worshippers, killing one person (a second was shot by police) and injuring several. These are just a few examples.
Why has the atmosphere become so febrile in Ireland and how can tensions be de-escalated?
Since the attacks of October 7th, 2023, there has been a societal-wide fury against Israel that has seen use of Holocaust inversion and anti-Semitic slurs by members of the Oireachtas, frenzied demonisation of Israel by some media and a sustained call to boycott Israel by Irish universities and members of the cultural community. We have been lectured on the subject of anti-Semitism by many, including former president Michael D Higgins, actors, comedians, writers, artists, trade unions, NGOs and others.
Many of these voices have coagulated into a baying mob, profoundly ignorant of the Jewish experience. They tell us we are paranoid, as our fears are dismissed by those who do not recognise anti-Semitism nor feel its effects. To those who march every weekend and chant “globalise the intifada”, understand what you have been calling for. In Bondi, on the first night of Hanukkah, the intifada was truly globalised.
For more than two years, I have tried to engage with the political class, explaining clearly that criticism of Israel does not automatically equate to anti-Semitism – there are millions of Jews who criticise Israel. However, the relentless demonisation of Zionism has spilled over into unabashed Jew hatred. The term “Zio”, an anti-Semitic slur popularised by a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has now entered common parlance, normalised and unchecked. A Sinn Féin MEP posted the term on X recently without receiving a public reprimand by either the party or the EU parliament. At the time of writing, the post has still not been removed.
This hate-filled void in empathy creates the kind of nonsensical reasoning that has Kneecap band members admit they relied on their manager’s political knowledge – while spewing out dangerous messages and deflecting criticism with the claim that the real crime is in Gaza. The fawning embrace of Kneecap and their cohort of performative protesters has resulted in a climate that has totally undermined Jews in Ireland, leaving us fearful of what may come next.
So where does the relationship between Ireland and its Jews go from here? I do wonder if we may have hit an inflection point with the recent uproar over the proposal to rename Herzog Park by the cross-party commemorations committee of Dublin City Council. I watched the emergency meeting online two weeks ago. It was breathtaking. Seven councillors accused Israel, its security services and/or its agents of pressurising the Irish Government to intervene in the process to cancel the proposal; a reimagining of the classic anti-Semitic trope of global Jewish control. Conor Reddy of People Before Profit pronounced that “the State of Israel has no place in the civilised world”. Where does he propose the seven million Israeli Jews (half the global Jewish population) go and on what legal basis?
The reaction to this mindless targeting of a tiny park in the middle of a Jewish area, opposite the only Jewish schools in Ireland, has disturbed many, even some of the most anti-Israeli voices. They can see, in this act, that the symbolism of stripping the Herzog name from this location is an anti-Semitic act that seeks to punish the Jews of Ireland for the actions of Israel. We can only hope this is the nadir; that the massacre in Bondi straightens the moral compass within the Irish society.
It is past time that sections of the media and political establishment take responsibility for their role in creating this atmosphere and dial down the rhetoric. We know where hateful language leads.
Oliver Sears is the son of a Holocaust survivor and founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland
