Ireland, is this true?

[SR71Blackbird]

Wasn’t sure where to ask this but there’s a piece in the JC about antisemitism in the Irish curriculum. It seems legit but incredulous:

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/jews-are-jesus-killers-and-israel-is-uniquely-aggressive-what-irish-pupils-are-taught-dhqmypgo

Can anyone here verify?

I think most people in Ireland think "anti Israel government" rather than anti Israel.
The brutality meted out to the Palestinians has been shocking, and there seems no end in sight. The military objectives for this are ill defined, so now it looks like genocide is the objective.
The terror attack in Israel was also horrendous, brutal and cruel.

Ireland is anti what Israel is doing, not anti-Israel. There’s a distinction.

A kid in the street could tell you about children suffering in Gaza. The focus is on horror at the suffering, a hope for peace and a two state solution being the answer - not antisemitism or anti Israel.

Yes, and if they have had a Catholic education, may know stories of how Jesus cared for the well being of children.

Re Catholics feeling solidarity with Palestinians as a default, it may seem odd to say it, but perhaps Irish Catholic people especially feel an affinity with Palestinians, not only because of how they, the Irish, were treated by the English and may now perceive this as being similar to the way the Israel government has treated Palestinians, but also because the Palestinians are part of what has always been thought of as The Holy Land, and the Palestinians, especially women, in many ways look as though they could be in a Bible story illustration, for example when you see them on loaded carts pulled by donkeys.

Some Catholics also feel that Muslims recognise Jesus at least as a great prophet, and that Muslims also tell of Mary and the birth of Jesus.

In the U.K.Muslim children are often sent to Catholic schools especially if they are single sex,

No, I’d say it’s mostly because of a shared type of history @ScrollingLeaves.
It wouldn’t have anything to do with religion imho.

I wouldn't recommend that any Jews move there for anything other than a very short term assignment.

Visiting my mum this morning and showed her elderly Jewish neighbour, who my family have lived next door to for 55 years, your above quote to get their perspective. She laughed and requested that the people who may cone to you for recommendations speak with her first for an alternative perspective from a lived experience.

Why are you changing @mollyfolk s words? She said being pro palestinian not anti Israel. It's a common default position in Ireland to empathise with people living under occupation and support their right to self determination and to live.

I agree, but I think there may also be a certain sense for Catholics of having an affiliation with Palestinians that is on an emotional, not especially logical, level too.

@ScrollingLeaves - Ordinary Palestinian people do not look like something out of a "bible story" to me, they look like real people who are suffering, poverty stricken and in a desperate situation.

It has nothing to do with Catholicism which no longer dominates Irish life. And it has nothing to do with feelings towards Muslim people, Jewish people or being "anti Israel". You see people calling for a ceasefire, calling for peace and reconciliation and a two state solution. Calling out the Israeli government.

You have hit the nail on the head - we have an affinity with the Palestinian cause because the Irish have also a history of oppression, many people view the great famine as genocide and more recently, all being equated with a terrorist group.

Ordinary Palestinian people do not look like something out of a "bible story" to me, they look like real people who are suffering, poverty stricken and in a desperate situation.

Of course I did not mean they were not real or that they did not look real.

On the contrary, you see Palestinian people on a cart pulled by a donkey - a 2000 year old means of escaping peril - while the IDF pounds them with all that 21st century U.S and European weaponry has to offer. All too real.

Well absolutely. The difference is stark. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

The long term demographics and political trends suggest that Ireland may yet be offering asylum to Israelis with left leaning views. It would be unfortunate if people were deterred from claiming asylum in the future due to propaganda.

@ScrollingLeaves I think Irish history is what gives the emotional link in the main here.

The affiliation with Palestinians is not at all because of religion (for me at least) and most Irish people aren’t particularly religious now anyway.

Learning about the Holocaust growing up in Ireland elicited huge amounts of sympathy for Jewish people obviously. People are critical of Israel now because of what it is doing, not because of who its people are.

The Catholic Church officially moved away from asserting that Jews killed Jesus, in 1965. They were also the first to legitimise both Hitler & Mussolini. There's no doubt there's some carry over from that Church's antisemitism but the majority of support for Palestinians comes from a different place.

The Church would be quite happy to see Palestinians, or any of the world's impoverished, trapped in poverty by restricting their access to contraception, the Irish people much less so.

most Irish people aren’t particularly religious now anyway.

Ah, ok I had not properly realised that and I am sure you are right about the important factor being Irish history.

Though I wonder about the idea of Irish people not being religious anymore as just not being literal about the Catholic church’s teachings etc does not stop a sort of cultural Catholicism; and I was going by the first “Is this true?” OP posts which were all about whether Catholic school books were or were not anti/semitic, in thinking this thread had a Catholic religion theme.

Thank you though, I take your point; and I don’t live in Ireland myself.

Dulra - your Mum's elderly Jewish neighbour would have no qualms about raising an Zionist modern-orthodox family in Ireland today? Loads of Irish couples in London who think differently....

@ScrollingLeaves You are right, many people are culturally Catholic still, but they don’t take it too seriously. The Catholic church had a huge amount of power here once, now it doesn’t.

Doesn't seem to or her, kids and grandkids.
I'm sure there are Irish couples in London that think differently and many English couples in Israel who feel that way about England. My point is there is antisemitism in Ireland but does that mean it is worse than other countries and are Jewish people less safe in Ireland than other countries? No I don't see any evidence that they are.

Edited to add. I am sure many Jewish people may feel isolated living in Ireland because it is such a small community here but that is something different.

@samG76

No you are correct. I can't think of any regular commentators who are pro the Israeli government or calling for the war to continue.

You have changed my words. Being pro Palestinian, pro ceasefire and pro two state solution is not being anti Israel.

Molly - everyone is in favour of a ceasefire - the question is what the terms will be. Without specifying these it is a pretty pointless thing to say.

The trend on the international left is not for a two state solution. There are many calls for the outright dissolution of Israel. It's the official position of many pro-Palestinian groups.

Have you evidence for this beyond an extremist view held by extremists and terrorist organisations?

international left
Who do you mean?

As opposed to any movement limited to one country, whether it be Israel, Ireland, et cetera.

I'm genuinely surprised you've not heard of this, unless you think I'm just talking about some Hamas conquest idea, but a previous post specified pro-two state solution. I'm talking about the one state solution, which is the abolition of Israel (not synonymous with the expulsion of Jews, but it does mean the end of Israel as the replacement would be some type of single Israeli-Palestinian state) which has been promoted for decades. Obviously, Netanyahu's annexation would also be a type of one-state solution, but what it means is a single state with equal rights for both peoples. In some formulations it's explicitly binational with clearly defined group rights (as in NI). It's controversial, but not extremist; it's something extensively discussed in academic circles. And this is why the accusations of "Zionist" like it's "Nazi" are so controversial: to many Jews, Zionism is simply the right of Israel to exist and not a defence of any government or its actions.

It's the position of groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace which is why that group is controversial within the Jewish community. It's not new. Edward Said famously supported it. Politicians and the UN officially hew to the two-state solution line because, at the very least, it would be irresponsible for any outside party to unilaterally change the terms of a settlement.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign does not officially take a stance (though its stance on removing all settler colonialism and full realisation of the right to return is contrary to Oslo's principles) but within PSC the one-state solution enjoys increasing support.

I run in left-ish Jewish circles and the two state vs. one state debate is a constant topic. It's also been key in the debate over the IHRA definition of antisemitism, as one state solution advocacy can be viewed as denial of Israel's right to exist and thus in contravention of this definition.

According to the JC, an American student was followed into the toilet at a Dublin nightclub a couple of weeks ago, asked if he was Jewish (he was wearing a star of David) and then beaten up. But hey, I guess it was anti-Zionism...

Yes it was a disgusting antisemitic assault and is being investigated as a hate crime by an gardai. No one has described it in any other way. Unfortunately like everywhere else we have violent racists thugs here too.