Sarah Harte: Yes, we can call out Israel’s actions in Gaza without being antisemitic

Several days ago, Tánaiste Micheál Martin was compelled to say that Ireland was “in no way an inherently antisemitic country and cherishes its Jewish community”.

After the Hamas attacks on Israel, how politicians, diplomats, and media react to and report on those attacks is spotlighted. 

The day after the Hamas atrocities, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN gave a speech saying: “History begins for some media and politicians when Israelis are killed. Our people have endured one deadly year after another.”

Accusations of media bias — from both sides

An Al Jazeera columnist wrote that the Western media wouldn’t acknowledge Israel’s “terrifying, perpetual war on Palestinians” because many reporters and columnists “interpreted events through a prism chiefly dictated by Israel”.

In contrast, several British MPs branded the BBC “antisemitic” for “giving legitimacy” to Hamas terrorists because the BBC declined to refer to Hamas as terrorists, instead terming them “the Hamas militant group”, “fighters”, and “militants”. 

The BBC responded that they reported the Hamas attacks, including contributors who condemned the attackers as terrorists and reported that Hamas was designated a terrorist group by many Western governments including the UK. A similar convention would appear to be adopted by media outlets here.

This week, the BBC has reportedly taken six reporters off air, investigating social media posts that seem to support Hamas’s actions against Israel.

And last year the British media watchdog Ofcom found that the BBC had committed “significant editorial failings” in its reporting of an antisemitic attack on Jewish students which occurred in 2021. Ofcom stated that the BBC had made a serious editorial misjudgment and failed to observe its editorial guidelines regarding due impartiality and due accuracy.

At the time, a spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said the BBC’s handling of the complaint was “sadly…what British Jews [had]come to expect from our public broadcaster.”

Misinformation, propaganda, and lies

Accurate reporting is more important than ever as a flood of misinformation, propaganda, fake news, and lies are shaping people’s views of the conflict.

Last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs was forced to reject an assertion that Ireland had refused to call Hamas a terrorist organisation, calling it “categorically false”.

“Hamas is listed by the EU as a terrorist organisation, unanimously agreed by all [EU states],” the statement said.

Israeli-based i24News had tweeted that the EU “wanted to issue a harsher statement but Luxembourg, Ireland, and Denmark refused to call Hamas a terror organisation”, crediting a diplomatic source.

In fact, Ireland had called for a statement asking for a de-escalation of hostilities on both sides. 

In response to queries, DFA confirms it is categorically false that Ireland refused to agree a reference to Hamas as a terrorist organisation in the EU statement in response to attacks in Israel. Hamas is listed by the EU as a terrorist organisation, unanimously agreed by all MSs

— Irish Foreign Ministry (@dfatirl) October 9, 2023

Both our Taoiseach and Tánaiste have     called for “moderate voices” to come to the fore — a needed sentiment. 

However, their call will be interpreted by some as proof that Ireland applies double standards when it comes to attacks on Israel. Probably because a strong narrative amongst some members of the Jewish community is that Irish people are anti-Israeli and antisemitic. 

Israeli media outlets regularly run stories suggesting that the Irish are anti-Israel. In July, Lahav Harkov wrote in The Jerusalem Post that “Irish politics has long been a difficult place for friends of Israel”.

In the piece, Lucinda Creighton — a former junior minister who is now the CEO of Vulcan Consulting which helps companies, including Israeli ones, to get a foothold in the EU — commented that in Ireland it was “difficult to extract antisemitism from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment”.

History shapes how we see Israel and Palestine

Realistically, how we react to the Israel-Palestine conflict is almost certainly influenced by our history. It would be inconceivable if, at some emotional level, we didn’t project our particular history of a struggle for national independence against an aggressive power onto the state of Israel. Does this make us antisemitic?

While the results of a major EU survey on antisemitism launched in January are due, a 2019 European Commission survey found that one in five Irish people believed that antisemitism was a problem here (the lowest level of the European countries surveyed). Notably, respondents were divided almost down the middle about whether their views on Jewish people were influenced by the conflict in the Middle East, suggesting a nexus between the two in the minds of some of the population, echoing Ms Creighton’s point.

Yet, compared to other European countries where antisemitism has risen alarmingly — including the desecration of graves, propaganda, and physical and verbal aggression in recent years — Ireland has not had many reported antisemitic incidents.

Maurice Cohen told the 2020 European Jewish Congress (a Brussels-based organisation dedicated to combating antisemitism) that the terms Nazi or Nazism were deployed indiscriminately in Irish political discourse.

“Due to this lack of knowledge, the term Nazism is bandied around in Ireland without knowing that it was, amongst other things, the premeditated, industrialised slaughter of six million Jews and many others that didn’t suit the Nazi regime,” he said. 

“A little education on what constitutes antisemitism would go a long way to correcting this problem.”

A sentence that stands out in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding definition of antisemitism which Ireland supports (without having formally adopted it) is: "However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

This supports the notion that you can criticise Israel’s violations of international law including the continued illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory without being antisemitic.

Last week, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, denied the UN’s assertion that Israel was failing to comply with international law, which is completely incorrect.

Meanwhile, we have a small Jewish community mostly living in Dublin estimated in a summary of results from the 2022 census to number 2,193. Another estimate suggests that almost 500 are Israelis who moved here in recent years.

They are in deep trauma, with Israeli families having relatives affected by what they regard as the pogrom in Israel. 

Stratford National School in Rathgar closed its doors last Friday on safety grounds, with some parents reportedly fearful of sending their children to school. This fear is mirrored around Europe where protection for Jewish people has been stepped up following a rise in antisemitic incidents.

Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder said they were taking the precautions recommended by the gardaí and were “happy with the measures put in place”.

The kneejerk support in some Irish quarters for the tyrannical Hamas is ill-conceived. As Yoni Wieder acknowledged, Hamas is not identical with the Palestinian cause, saying “we don’t equate civilians in Gaza with Hamas”.

At this time, many of us extend our unequivocal sympathies to our Jewish community. 

However, a concomitant concern for subjugated, innocent, Palestinians in a humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the Israeli government mounts a retaliatory counterattack does not negate that sympathy.

Nor is it necessarily indicative of a natural ambivalence regarding anti-Jewish prejudice or a tendency to downplay antisemitism.