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?

The whole the world was created in seven days.
I don't tell them it's not true explicitly.

You can though, surely. If the school is Catholic in ethos, I know other faiths believe in Genesis as fact but Catholicism doesn't.

(Or didn't back in my day anyway, long time since I've been in a church!)

Even my devout fifth and sixth class teacher told us it was a story, not the truth.

It's more that it's in the Junior Infant program and I just presented it as a story rather than really explaining it to them it wasn't true explicitly.
I would never present it as fact. Especially when in the book there is pictures of dinosaurs under the caption God created animals!

The Jewish chronicle changed hands and had gone from being a respected newspaper to a propaganda machine with some very sinister financial backing- mystery owner type thing. So expect to see lots of this stuff if you’re a regular reader.
I can’t see the report up on Impact-SE website. Presumably it was leaked early because Ireland and Spain should be discredited with so many civilians killed in past few weeks
Impact-se is a right wing Israel based pro - Israeli actor - not Swedish.The funding is a bit of a mystery but there are links to AIPAC . The key people are various Israeli spin doctors with links to the usual US pro - Israeli “think tanks” and IDF.
Textbooks are used to teach the National curriculum, there aren’t fixed texts as such, so a text book reflects the author and their editor not a country

Ah sorry yeah, gotcha :)

Yes- my understanding is that Catholics believe Genesis contains “poetic truth” . It’s not literal - it uses symbol and metaphor to convey ideas about the stages of creation etc .
Catholics don’t teach it as literal fact .

Went through education system here in Ireland. Never got told that the Jews killed Jesus, war always told he and his family were Jewish.
Also the horrors and wrongs of the Holocaust were taught too.
I've never heard any antisemitic comments either, it's such a small community though so I'm not sure if many are aware of it here.

And I’m horrified at the idea that any religious teaching anywhere would talk about “the Jews” killing Jesus. As pp have said - Jesus, Our Lady , all the apostles etc were Jewish .
Unless I see firm evidence I can’t believe this story is true. There may be pockets of nasty anti- semitism in Ireland ( sadly those sort of people exist everywhere) but I really don’t believe you’ll find it in school books.

Teaching has obviously changed (a lot) from when I was at a Catholic convent because we were taught that Catholicism was the one true religion and that the bible was true.

Having said that - it is really sad that young Irish Jews are feeling vulnerable and fearful in school. I do think that even if the story about the school book is inaccurate there is almost certainly truth in the report that Irish Jews feel unsafe . That needs to be addressed urgently and the report should be taken seriously from that point of view.

Well - fortunately times have definitely changed !!

Yeah me too. Jesus and his family were Jewish, Judaism was very much taught as part of the same family as Christianity. And never anything other than horror at the Holocaust (you'd hope that wouldn't need to be said).

Yes for well over forty years it is taught as this is the beliefs but we scientifically know.

I went to a convent and our religion teacher was also a science teacher so she held no shift with it. As a nun she clearly said the bible uses stories to teach a value. That was over forty years ago now.

I think that there has been a big change in how religion teaching is integrated into the nation schools nowspafays-no sin -“ just an instance when I didn’t act in a loving way”, the emphasis was on empathy, identifying positive and negative feelings, letting go of failures, forgiveness and reconciliation, letting go of grudges, letting go of hurt, dramas to act out the feelings, the ideas of acceptance and unconditional love. There were no bad guys or blame, definitely nothing about Judaism or any other religion and God portrayed as a loving parent in a very hippyish general way. The key themes were that each child was worthy of love, how does it feel for a person whose feelings get hurt and how do you feel when you don’t act in a loving way and how do you reconcile and how to recognise guilt and learning to forgive yourself after reconciliation and reparation. I think that was enough to be going on with!
But maybe that’s just our school- we didn’t have any die hard hell and brimstone types on the staff and the ethos was definitely “Catholicism Lite” , maybe even “ultra-lite” and quite a few children had experienced traumas in their short lives .

Didn't the Romans kill jesus?? That's what we were taught in Ireland 30 years ago.

Well - yes maybe one Roman .. Pilate I guess ? But not “Romans” collectively ( anymore than Jews collectively )

Well let's be fair it involved more than one roman. Pilate ordered it but others carried it out.

This NY Times article on the JC is interesting www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/world/europe/jewish-chronicle-uk-fabricated-stories-owner.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap#

And here: www.theguardian.com/media/2024/sep/15/columnists-quit-jewish-chronicle-gaza-conflict-stories

I am Irish and anti genocide. We should all be anti genocide, thats basic being a human. This does not make.me antinsemetic. Theres a big difference

There are a heap of lies being circulated about Ireland being antisemitic, and random pieces of information (much misinterpreted) being put out there to justify this.
One that gets a lot of mentions is De Valera and offering condolences on Hitlers death. The article down below provides some info on that.

www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2023/0910/1404292-eamon-de-valera-hitler-analysis/

Very odd that there's a campaign to boycott a Netflix biblical series on the basis that the actress playing Mary is an Israeli Jew. You would think that is exactly who it should be....

Amen to that. Irish people have empathy and have witnessed bloodshed for territorial and religious reasons. It is not antisemitic to call out the murder of innocent children.