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Anthony McIntyre ☠ The three of them lined up for the showdown that became a slowdown. 

No knockout blows, no clear points victory, there was nothing to detonate the Big Bang, which may have surprised some given Sinn Fein's background. Pretty much a damp squib sort of night.


Watching Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Tweedleduh line up to out-Tweedle each other did not put me to sleep but when I eventually made it to bed around midnight, I slept undisturbed until 0700. A rare nocturnal occurrence in my life.

Given the woes of Fine Gael over the past ten days Simon Harris, who had lost more ground than his rivals, consequently had more ground to retrieve. While the polls have yet to indicate what the wider electorate feel, from where I sat it seems that he succeeded. His performance was the strongest of the three, even admired by my son who is still of an age to believe People Before Profit have all the answers. Because he was battling a self-inflicted deficit, whatever success Simon Harris enjoyed last evening just pays off existing debt rather than become profit to be banked as political and electoral capital.

The comment of the night that chimed with me most was from the Sinn Fein leader when she described Nazi Israel's war on the civilian population of Gaza as genocidal. While it was a much needed contribution to public discourse I feel it would have been better said face-to-face on camera to Genocide Joe in Washington on Patrick's Day. Then it would really have meant something. Last night, not nearly as much. 

Fine Gael's woes have been accumulating. The Simon Harris exchange with the care worker, Charlotte Fallon, had the potential to be a defining moment in the campaign. Then it emerged that Hildegarde the Hypocrite campaigned for a councillor she knew to have sent pornographic images to a a female Oireachtas staff member.

When Sinn Féin were facing scrutiny over how they handled internal party issues, Mr Harris and his Fine Gael ministers demanded transparency from Mary Lou McDonald, which resulted in her making a Dáil statement.

Trying to manage the optics and project an image of young vibrant Simon Harris too fleetfooted for old stale Mary Lou McDonald, was hobbled by a damaged projector. The flight back into government was now experiencing severe turbulence.

Sinn Fein scenting blood, hoped that it might lead to a resurgence in its own fortunes. In the media it moved the dial more towards getting Fine Gael out of office. That seemed a pitch to the Fianna Fail grassroots that Sinn Fein would be a better partner in government for it than Fine Gael. A wise enough tactic for a party that now pays only lip service to progressive politics, but one which was over reliant on a hope that Simon Harris would have a Sean Gallagher moment. It didn't happen. McDonald's performance was nothing remotely like the 2007 debacle served up by Gerry Adams 'where he was judged a disaster' and which which saw him publicly eviscerated by Michael McDowell. Yet, she needed to do much more than stay on her feet and reach the end of the bout. Success for her meant flooring the men to either side of her. As she was unable to do that, in all probability she hasn't done enough to make her party a likely contender to be a coalition partner in the next government.

Not that it amounts to much either way. No matter who assumes office after Friday's election the rich will be no poorer and the poor no richer.



⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

A Night At The Crapera

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Ninety Seven

 

A Morning Thought @ 2347

Barry Gilheany ✍ The immediate news reports and the ticker tape flashes scrolling across our television screens in the aftermath of the riots in Amsterdam connected to the recent European Conference League match between Ajax Amsterdam and the Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv told an appalling, almost sacrilegious tale. 

Jews as represented by the supporters of Maccabi were being hunted down, beaten up and almost killed in a European city on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Nazi Germany in 1938 and in a city which among Western capitals exported the most Jews (three quarters of the Netherland’s entire Jewish population) to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other factories in the Nazi Holocaust industrial complex in World War Two. Cue condemnations of this seeming 21st pogrom came from President Herzog and (unsurprisingly cynically) Prime Minister Netanyahu; US President Biden; the Dutch king;
Ursula von der Leyen of the EU and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The initial shock impact even led this author to prematurely post on Facebook “On the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Jews again being attacked on the streets of a European city.” (now deleted).

Except that the story is much more complicated than this ultra-simplistic narrative. As is now well documented. Maccabi fans who have a notorious far right nationalist Ultra following were videoed shouting racist anti-Arab chants in relation to the Gaza war such as “Death to Arabs! No children left in Gaza. IDF, IDF Finish the Job!” There were numerous reports of drunken behaviour by Maccabi fans, taxis were attacked and Palestinian flags torn down (Anecdotally, I have often heard it said that Israelis frequently display aggressive behaviour abroad). The Times of Israel reported that, on their return to Israel, Maccabi fans continued to chant anti-Arab racist slurs at Ben-Gurion airport.[1]

After the match, Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, a member of the generally pro-Palestinian, Green-Left party, reported “hit and run” attacks on Israeli supporters, Maccabi fans were “sought, hunted and attacked” via antisemitic calls on social media and on the streets. Witnesses and screenshots of text messages suggest that some had targeted Jews, asking people if they were Israeli or to show their passports.[2] Video footage has shown victims being beaten and kicked to the ground and thrown into the canal while being forced to shout, “Free Palestine”. In the event, there were five recorded injuries and sixty arrests including ten Israelis.

So, it is clear that the events surrounding that match did not amount to one-dimensional antisemitism. But nor did it represent a heroic response of oppressed Moroccan or other Middle Eastern heritage groups to “Zionist” or Israeli racism against symbols of Palestinian resistance and nationality. It was a toxic cocktail of racially motivated football hooliganism, passions over the Gaza war and antisemitic motivated retaliation against the Israeli fans refracted through the discourse of Arabist and Islamist antizionism. All played out in a modern European city that h\as to deal the conflicts arising from migration, the imperative to reconcile immigrant or second-generation immigrant communities to the values of the host nations and the ghosts of Dutch participation in the Holocaust. In such an atmosphere certain actors on the far right have weaponised antisemitism for their blatantly racist agendas. Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom holds the most seats in the Dutch parliament, has stirred ethnic antagonisms by calling for the revocation of Dutch citizenship and deportation for those convicted in involvement in the attacks. Nora Achanbar, the Moroccan born secretary for benefits in the Dutch coalition government and other members of her centre-right New Social Contract (NSC) party, resigned from the government over polarising and inflammatory comments by colleagues over Dutch citizens from ethnically diverse backgrounds.[3]

What is clear is that both Jewish and Muslim communities in Amsterdam have been traumatised by these events in their city. For Jewish residents, Emile Schrijver, the general director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which includes the new National Holocaust Museum, has spoken of “horror and a sense of despair combined with anger – anger that the sense of freedom has gone”[4] Prior to the match there had already been widespread anger in the Jewish community at earlier decisions by the Mayor to allow anti-Israel protests at the opening of the Holocaust Museum in March and at the commemoration of the Hamas attacks on 7th October.[5]

According to Mustafa Hamarcu, the chair of IGMG Noord-Netherland, a movement focused on the integration of Muslims in society, the Muslim community was now bracing itself for what may come next. For Abdelkader Benali, a Moroccan-born writer resident in the Netherlands for more than four decades the violence was “a tragedy. A tragedy of the times we live in”[6]

Antisemitism: Its Etymology and Misuses

Writing in the aftermath of the Amsterdam disturbances, Rachel Shabi, author of Off-White. The Truth About Antisemitism, one of a growing genre on contemporary antisemitism, observes that the opposing narratives about them follow “the contours of our shameful and divisive conversations about antisemitism”. The initial sensationalist coverage helped to spawn two “polarising” camps “either it was about thuggish anti-Palestinian hatred or rampant antisemitism, but not both”. She regrets the absence of a unifying antiracist discourse which would recognise that “understandable hostility” to the actions of the State of Israel during the continuing warfare in the Middle East “does sometimes get articulated through antisemitism and expressed as violence”.[7]

So how to analyse, negotiate and make sense of the semantic fog that surrounds contemporary antisemitism particularly its intersection with antizionism and criticism of the State of Israel so as to facilitate the articulation of the more universalist antiracist praxis that Rachel Shabi and other progressive Jews seek. First it is necessary to get to grips with the basic premises of antisemitism/Judeophobia/Jew hate.

Jewishness: From Semantic Conflict to Universal Signifier

Dislike and hatred of the Jew is a seemingly perpetual mutant and self-replicating virus throughout human history. It ship shapes depending on the vagaries of the era. In the popular imagination, Jewry tends to be associated with control of money, be it in the figure of Shylock and his pound of flesh as the ultimate icon of the evils of usury or dominance of global financial movements as personalised in the supposedly nefarious influence of the Rothschilds. In religious mythos, Jews are responsible for the deicide of Jesus Christ and the killing of Christian children supposedly so that their blood can be baked in the making Matzo bread. This was made despite Judaism’s prohibition of blood sacrifice. Despite the renunciation of the deicide charge by the Second Vatican Council, the Christ killer and blood libel tropes remain present to a disturbing degree in contemporary antisemitic discourse. Jewry’s political and ideological detractors attribute many of the world’s convulsive movements from the Black Death, French and Russian Revolutions, the outbreak of two World Wars and right down to 9/11 and the Covid pandemic to the machinations of all powerful Jewish cabal or the rootless cosmopolitan Jew. All of these elements were distilled into the specifically racialised construction of Jews by the German Nazis and then implemented in an unprecedented and barely imaginable attempt to eradicate the lives and of any evidence of the existence of every Jew on the continent of Europe in the Shoah/Holocaust.

Political antisemitism has traditionally emanated from the extreme right but there is a left-wing tradition of antisemitism in Marxist critiques of the role of Jews in the development of capitalism. Black separatist nationalists such as Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam claim that Jews were disproportionately involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Modern antizionism at the very least overlaps with traditional antisemitism in that where the generic antisemite attributes the Original Sin of the killing of Jesus Christ and locates the source of all evil to the Jew, so the antizionist views the creation of the State of Israel as an Original Sin and places it at the centre of all the evils of the world.

The Etymology of Jew Hate

Understanding of the history of animosity to Jews can actually be hindered by the word ‘antisemitism’ in that the word was not even coined by Jewish people. It was invented by a Wilhelm Marr, a German Jew-hater who wanted a modern-sounding name for his new and ultimately unsuccessful political party, the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites). It was set up in 1879 with:

the one aim of saving our German fatherland from complete Judaisation … liberating Germanism from the oppressive weight of Jewish influence in social, political and ecclesiastical matters.

Marr chose the word ‘antisemitism’ because Hebrew, the language of Jewish prayer, is one of the collectivity of Middle Eastern tongues described as Semitic languages. His choice of term causes confusion because it inaccurately suggests that antisemitism means prejudice against people who speak any Semitic language, which would include Arabic, Amharic, Maltese and several Middle Eastern dialects. However, Marr was adamant that his new world only related to Jews, and it was Jews who were the focus of his new party. The word ‘antisemitism’ did survive the demise of the League of Antisemites and has become universal parlance for anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination.[8]

Dave Rich writes that the Oxford English Dictionary provides a route map into centuries of linguistic anti-Jewish prejudice. After the OED’s initial definition of ‘Jew’ as ‘a member of a people whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins through the ancient Hebrew people of Israel to Abraham; a follower or adherent of Judaism; Rich describes who it provides a thesaurus of all the pejorative associations with the word ‘Jew’, historical and current. There is the definition of ‘Jew’ as someone who is ‘regarded stereotypically as scheming or excessively concerned with making or saving money.’ There are phrases like as ‘rich as a Jew’ and the compound terms ‘Jew agitator’, ‘Jew broker’, ‘Jew merchant’, ‘Jew boy’, ‘Jew girls’ etc. There are ones that Rich claims ignorance of such as ‘like a Jew cart’ (‘a cart used to carry stolen goods, supposedly) and ‘Jewcraft’ meaning ‘conduct or behaviour stereotypically regarded as characteristic of Jewish people. Then there are the really offensive active verbs such as ‘to Jew’ or to ‘Jew down' meaning to ‘try to get the better of a person by charging too much or paying too little; to haggle’ and ‘to cheat or swindle’. The OED goes onto to list examples of the most offensive terms and their copious literary usage from the works of T.S. Eliot, Coleridge, Byron, Trollope and many others thus showcasing how suffused the English literary world has been by antisemitic expressions and tropes.[9]

Bernard Harrison notes a significant difference in tone and meaning between the OED’s online definition of antisemitism and that found in its printed version. The online definition states that “antisemitism “is the name of an emotional state: of “hostility and prejudice” towards individual Jews considered as Jews. Critics of the alleged conflation of antisemitism and antizionism take as the starting point for their argument argue that reasoned political opposition towards the continued existence of a state (in this case the State of Israel) is surely to be distinguished from unreasoning hostility toward individual Jews, even when the state in question happens to be a Jewish state. Hence, antizionism cannot by nature or by logic be considered antisemitic; QED.[10]

The print version however reads: “Anti-Semitism. Theory, action or practice directed against the Jews. Hence anti-Semite, one who is hostile or opposed to the Jews. Anti-Semitic”. This longer and more deliberative definition, while encompassing individual hostility to Jews, opens up the possibility of other forms of antisemitism, especially practices, actions, or theories which constitute the life blood of collective or political life. Emphasising the primary importance of theory in this triad, Harrison conceptualises antisemitism as the theory, or political fantasy, that Jews are conspiratorially organised to exercise secret control over the world in order to pervert the energies of non-Jewish society into the service of sinister Jewish ends. Antisemitism of this type peddles, among many other delusive and deranged notions, the idea that “the Jews” are the real agents behind vast and dangerous forces threatening world peace.[11]

Harrison emphasises the importance of distinguishing between ‘social antisemitism’, the casually racist, prejudicial or stereotypical form displayed against Jews often of one’s personal acquaintance and which is captured in the OED online version and the explanatory form about who really possessed the power to determine world events and which has had such lethal consequences from the recurrent pogroms against Jews in Europe from the Middle Ages to their ghastly consummation in the Shoah/Holocaust. On this account, the Final Solution was not set in motion because the Nazis believed that Jews were a bunch of hucksters and vulgarians who had insinuated themselves into social circles where they were not welcome but because they seriously believed that the real enemy of the Third Reich was not the British Empire, the USA or the USSR but the vast Jewish conspiracy that they supposed, secretly controlled these – only seemingly independent- powers through its control of world capitalism.[12]

It is comforting to believe that with the well documented, commemorated and popular knowledge of the Holocaust, that such horrors can just remain as giant historical artefacts and that social antisemitism of the type spouted by neo-Nazi and white supremacist micro-groups is the only type to worry about or indeed is the only type extant. While contemporary far right antisemites are still menacingly visible as the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right” rally and the Tree of Life synagogue massacre has proved, antisemitism as a delusive political theory has reemerged in the post 9/11 era with Zionism and the State of Israel assuming the mysterious, demonic and conspiratorial power of “the Jews”. The transmission belts for the new antisemitism are less the Church and “blood and soil” ethnonationalism but more in academia and both the liberal and “anti-imperialist left" where existential hostility to the State of Israel as opposed to criticism of its specific policies are often requited as admission passes. It hardly needs pointing out that the widespread hostility to “elites”; the receptiveness of many to conspiracy theories around the WEF, vaccination programmes and global paedophilic networks has created a propitious environment for modern antisemitism in the guise of conspiratorial antizionism as well as, it must be aid, the daily horrors in Gaza and the utter intractability of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Words, Israel-Palestine and Antisemitism

Words and their deployment matter whether in academe, political contestation or in the struggles and perils of everyday life. Plato argued that rhetoric in democracies blurred fact and fiction. Hannah Arendt integrates the corruption of language into her monumental study of totalitarianism. George Orwell’s iconic novel, 1984, is structured around the Party’s power to colonise the meaning of words (“War is Peace”. “Freedom is Slavery”) and to deprive the people of the capacity for independent judgment and critical thinking.[13]

Words have histories and genealogies. If meanings are not stable, they are altered for a reason. Words are also social constructs whose change agents are authors, speakers and their listeners. Because of the critical functions and transformational potential of words, patterns of speech are contagious. Language shapes human thought and emotions. Questions of language are indicators of power distribution in societies and institutions. They denote adherence enabling the creation of alliances. They empower not only because they claim to provide insight into dynamic, fast -moving situations or events but also because they provoke calls to action. Words are more signifiers of partisan political allegiances than about policy positions. Language is often a potent weapon to coalesce people who may share little in common except the belief that the present order is corrupt (“The system is rigged. All politicians are the same. The Deep State works against society”) and that it yields a moral imperative to take it down (“Drain the Swamp. Elitism/Globalism/Neoliberalism is Evil”).[14]

There are few more arenas of conflict where these linguistic truisms operate with such raw intensity than the decades long struggle between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs (and before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that between Jews, Arabs and the British authorities in Mandate Palestine). Several explanations abound. The Holy Land (or modern Israel and the Palestinian Territories) is the birthplace of the three Abrahamic religions and the site of their major shrines – Temple of the Mount, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Bethlehem pilgrimage site for Christians. Foundational and faith-based philosophies around access to these venues and the centrality of, in particular Jerusalem, to the respective narratives of each religion can leave little room for compromise. For others, the Israeli/Palestinian Arab conflict serves as a proxy for unresolved ethnic or racial conflicts at home, be it Northern Ireland, South Africa or the United States, where respective protagonists project their persistent grievances and sense of community identity onto one or other ‘side’ in Israel/Palestine. Others pick ‘sides’ based on wider geopolitical allegiances such as pro-Palestinians whose allegiance is code for wider solidarity with the Global South and anti-imperialist, anti-American hegemony sentiments; conversely pro-Israelis point to the fact that it (behind the Green Line at any rate) it is the only democracy in the ocean of authoritarian regimes that is the rest of the MENA region. Others genuinely support one side or the other (without demonising the other) for universalist and humanist reasons. Supporters of Israel base their allegiance on the grounds on the right and historical need for a homeland for the Jewish people in a part of the world that they were originally indigenous to before millennia of exile, discrimination and murderous persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Advocates for Palestinian rights proclaim an equally justified claim for an independent state and justice for a similarly diasporic people exiled from their homeland by the catastrophe of the Nakba in 1948-49 and whose despair and frustration at not having their aspirations and dignity realised by the failure of successive peace initiatives is exponentially worsened by the growing indifference of the rest of the world to their plight (not least their Arab brethren) and growing aggrandisement by Israeli administrations whose centre of gravity has moved disturbingly to the nationalist far right.

There is no mutual contradiction in supporting justice, peace, security and the aspirations of both ‘sides’. In the words of Jonathan Freedland, the essential tragedy of the conflict is that it is one ‘between right and right’[15]. However, darker forces motivate the choices of some to choose their side in this perennial ‘football match’.[16] For example, the flaunting of support for Israel by notorious far right figures such as Tommy Robinson and the “football lads” mob who rioted at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Weekend in protest against the pro-Palestinian march which was a weekly occurrence each Saturday in the last three months of 2023 and the Shock Jane commentator Katie Hopkins (who mused about a “final solution” for Muslims after the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017) reflects Islamophobic and racist passions rather than any love for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The oft-professed support for Israel by Evangelical Christian Zionists is a theological cover for Christian antisemitic fantasies about the conversion of “God’s Chosen People” to Christianity after their concentration in the ancient Biblical land of Israel prior to the Second Coming of the Messiah.

A particularly disturbing example of this type of Christian Zionism or Dispensationalist theology are the words and activities of John Hagee the Texan televangelist pastor and head of the lobby group Christians United for Israel (CUFI) which has over 10 million members. Their professed love for Jews can hardly be reconciled with a sermon Hagee made in 1999 (though he claims he was misrepresented) in which he said God ‘allowed’ the Holocaust to happen, with Hitler as a ‘hunter’ sent because the Lord’s own priority ‘for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel’. He also said that Jewish people brought persecution upon themselves because of their ‘disobedience and rebellion from God’. [17]

Hagee’s last minute invitation to speak at the March for Israel in Washington, DC in mid-November 2023 where tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied to support Israel, to demand the release of the hostages taken by Hamas on 7th October and to protest against antisemitism caused revulsion amongst American Jewish organisations such as Americans for Peace Now and the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J-Street who noted, among other things, that no rabbi had been invited to speak.[18]

Donald Trump’s love-in with Benjamin Netanyahu during his first Presidency (which apparently didn’t survive the 7/10 attacks) sat very uneasily with his invocation of antisemitic tropes; his pronouncement of their being “very fine people on both sides” in the aftermath of the violent “Jews will not replace us” Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally in July 2017 and his proclamation of Netanyahu as the “leader of your people” the opposition to whom from Democratic voting American Jews was a sign of their disloyalty to Israel (a simultaneous antisemitic trope connoting disloyalty of Jewish people to their host country). Of course, hostility to Israel and Zionism as representations of Jewishness and Jewish power still emanates from the neofascist and white supremacist far right from figures like the former BNP leader Nick Griffin and Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke and is amplified by certain ‘pro-Palestinian’ accounts on X (formerly Twitter) such as that of Jackson Hinkle, a Trump fanatic and pro-Russian supporter, who grabbed the opportunity provided by the 7th October attacks and subsequent Gaza war to praise Hamas and slamming Zionists. His bilious hate and disinformation helped to boost his X account from 500,000 to 2.3 million followers.[19]

For scholars of the New or Contemporary Left Antisemitism, the anti-Zionist discourse and practice of many pro-Palestinians barely disguises antisemitic ideas which never really disappeared from left wing ideology and which allied to Islamist and Arab nationalist antizionism and anti-war, anti-Western sentiment that emerged with such potence in the post 9/11, War on Terror era, created the toxic political culture that led to the antisemitism sagas that disfigured the British Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and that ultimately led to it being found guilty of discrimination against its Jewish members by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2020. It is alleged that it this culture that structures the delegitimising narratives against Israel that has created so many ripples outside Israel; the allegations that it is a Nazi state that commits genocide against Palestinian Arabs; that it is an apartheid state; that it is a European settler-colonial outpost in the Arab part of the Global South; that it acts as America’s policeman in the MENA region; that its diplomats wield undue influence on the governments and legislatures of other countries as well as opinion makers (the media) and that its original sin lies in its ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian Arab population in the Nakba that followed in the wake of Israel’s independence and subsequent Arab-Israeli war in 1948. This charge sheet derives from a decolonisation narrative that has been become increasingly prevalent in university campuses on both sides of the Atlantic and which has seeped into media and NGO worlds.

Shabi critiques the central pillars of this “new antisemitism” – the three Ds, delegitimation, demonisation and double standards in relation to the State of Israel – formulated in 2004 by the former Soviet dissident and then minister without portfolio Natan Sharansky in Ariel Sharon’s government. While not an unworthy exercise in itself and cautioning that not all antisemitic claims are smears to deflect from criticisms of Israel and of the two thousand year old mutating and ship shifting nature antisemitism for two thousand years, she evidences how this version of antisemitism has been so effectively weaponised by the Right to chill Palestinian advocacy; to demonise demonstrations against the war in Gaza as “hate marches” and to censor pro-Palestinian arts and cultural activities particularly in Germany which, in the name of the country’s Holocaust remembrance culture, Germany’s Staatsrason, the reason of state, has a long history of suppressing even the faintest criticism of Israel. For example, in October 2023, the Frankfurt Book Fair postponed an award ceremony for the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, amid fears of how that would be perceived in the context of the war on Gaza. The global media giant Axel Springer, which has support for Israel as company policy, fired a twenty-year-old apprentice who challenged and posted a You Tube video on his private channel questioning the now disproven claim that forty babies were beheaded in the 7th October Hamas attacks. In November 2023, the Jewish artist Candice Breitz’s exhibition in Saarland, Germany was axed, after she had posted on social media condemning both the ‘grotesque bombardment’ of Gaza and the ‘horrific carnage’ of 7 October.[20].

Arguably, even worse was the controversy over the joint Berlin International Film Award in February 2024 to the Israeli filmmaker, Yuval Abraham, and his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra for their documentary No Other Land which paints a searing picture of the cruelties of the Occupation of the West Bank, German officials described the prize ceremony as “antisemitic”; the consequences of which were a stream of death threats to Abraham and his Israeli family being forced to leave their home by a baying right-wing mob. By weaving unconditional support for Israel into its own redemption story over the Holocaust, Germany was completely silencing the voices of Palestinians and having the audacity to preach to an Israeli Jew about antisemitism. In the words of Abraham:

To stand on German soil as the son of Holocaust survivors and call for a ceasefire – and then to be labelled as antisemitic is not only outrageous, it is also literally putting Jewish lives in danger.[21].

Lessons for the Future

A future article will examine the background to, discourse of and the ancestry of the New Antisemitism. For now, the terrible degradation of the term ‘antisemitism’ into the unquestioning defence of “Israel. Right or Wrong has come exactly at the moment when awareness of it is of such critical importance. At the moment of a global resurgence of antisemitism. When anger over Israel’s war in Gaza is viciously rebounding on Jewish people outside Israel who have no influence there and cannot be held accountable for its actions. In 2023 in the UK alone, of the 4,103 incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors antisemitism, two thirds took place after 7 October. Instances include random shouting of antisemitic abuse from cars; bricks and bottles being thrown at people; threats made to and consequent beefing up of security around schools and synagogues and overt casual approval of Hitler made in public places.[22]

A good start would be language moderation and dialling down of rhetoric. For example, while the post-match violence in Amsterdam had marked anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli features, it did not amount to a pogrom in that pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe tended to have the stamp of official approval and resulted in body counts in double or even treble figures. Weaponising the Holocaust and use of Nazi analogies by partisans on both sides of the Israel/Palestine divide is not helpful and frankly ahistorical and offensive. Dehumanising language such as “human animals” and “Amalek” used by Israeli leaders to describe Hamas at the beginning of the Gaza war and “Zionist child killers” by opponents of Israel should form no part of any civilised discourse. Engagement with modern antisemitism requires acknowledgement of the nuances of the Israel/Palestine conflict and of the discursive frameworks and specificities of antisemitism. Above all, weaponising of antisemitism by the pro-Israel/philosemitic far right or the deployment of antisemitic tropes of simple Jew hatred by antizionists should always be red lights for antiracists.

[1] The Netherlands. Perry Biedermann After the violence, the soul-searching. The New European 9-16 November 2024.

[2] Ashifa Kassam and Senay Boztas ‘ A tragedy of our time’. Soul searching after Amsterdam violence. Guardian, 15th November 2024.

[3] Anifa Kassam, Senay Boztas and Pjotr Sauer Dutch coalition in turmoil in wake of violence in Amsterdam Guardian 16th November 2024.

[4] Guardian, 15th November 2024 p.27.

[5] The New European p.2.

[6] Guardian, 15th November, p.27

[7] Rachel Shabi The aftermath of Amsterdam’s violence should be a vital lesson. Guardian 16th November 2024.

[8] Dave Rich (2023) Everyday Hate. How Antisemitism is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It. London: Biteback Publishing

[9] Ibid, p.2

[10] Barnard Harrison (2020) Blaming the Jews. Politics and Delusion. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.

[11] Ibid, p.7

[12] Ibid pp.8-9

[13] Divine, p.1

[14] Divine, p.3

[15] Jonathan Freedland The tragedy of the Israel/Palestine conflict is this: underneath all the horror is a clash of two just causes. The Guardian 28th October 2023.

[16] Ibid

[17] Rachel Shabi (2024) Off White. The Truth About Antisemitism. London: OneWorld pp.187-88

[18] Ibid, p.188.

[19] Ibid, p.220.

[20] Ibid, 170.

[21] Ibid, p.171.

[22] Ibid, pp.173-74.

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

Football Hooliganism, Israel/Palestine Conflict And European Guilt Over Antisemitism 🪶 A Fateful Triangle 🪶 Reflections On The Amsterdam Riots

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Ninety Six

Merrion Press 🔖has just published a new book by Trevor Birney.

 

OUT NOW

SHOOTING CROWS
Mass Murder, State Collusion and Press Freedom
Trevor Birney

 



A shocking exposé of the deadly collusion between the RUC and Loyalist terrorists responsible for the 1994 Loughinisland massacre from bestselling author and Emmy-nominated film producer Trevor Birney.

Everyone knows where they were when Ray Houghton outfoxed the Italian goalkeeper in the 1994 World Cup finals. Every television in the country was tuned in to the match, and The Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co. Down was no exception. But two miles down the road, three men with no interest in Ireland’s footballing progress were planning a deadly massacre. Shortly after half-time they burst through the door of the bar and opened fire, spraying bullets indiscriminately. As they fled the scene, six innocent men lay dead or dying.

In 2017 journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey produced a groundbreaking documentary, No Stone Unturned, about Loughinisland and allegations of collusion between the RUC and the loyalist terrorists behind the attack. However, it was Birney and McCaffrey, not the perpetrators of violence who then found themselves the target of PSNI anger.

Shooting Crows tells a shocking story of collusion and betrayal, and of a State still willing to corrupt justice and persecute the innocent to hide the sins of its past.

Paperback • €19.99 •  336 pages •  226 mm x 153 mm • 9781785375255

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Trevor Birney is an Emmy-nominated film producer, director and journalist. In 2017 he produced the ground-breaking documentary No Stone Unturned, about the 1994 murder by UVF gunmen of six Catholics in Loughinisland, County Down. Birney’s work resulted in their wrongful arrests by the PSNI, who later paid the producers significant damages. His book Quinn (Merrion Press, 2022) was a bestseller and longlisted for Eason Book of the Year 2022. He produced the 2024 film Kneecap, which won the NEXT Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.

Out Now 📚 Trevor Birney

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Ninety Five

 

A Morning Thought @ 2346

Hugh O’Donnell –✍ Breaking news.
‘We must put our political and personal differences to the one side in the interests of these families and the victims’ - Cllr Frank McBrearty Jr

Donegal County Council has unanimously backed a call for an independent statutory judicial public inquiry into the explosion in Creeslough, County Donegal.

The explosion on October 7, 2022, killed 10 people: Shauna Flanagan (5), her father Robert Garwe, Leona Harper, Hugh Kelly, Jessica Gallagher, Martin McGill, James O’Flaherty, Martina Martin, Catherine O’Donnell and her son James Monaghan.

Speaking at Donegal County Council’s November plenary, Cllr Frank McBrearty Jr, who proposed the motion, said it was vital the proposed public inquiry had “an open terms of reference”.

(The full text of the motion is carried at the end of this article.)

He called on the new, incoming Dublin Government to establish the public inquiry “within its first 100 days in office”.

Speaking to his motion, Cllr McBrearty first referenced Martin Luther King Jr who said:

An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I believe these comments by Martin Luther King sum up the injustices the Creeslough families are enduring daily, 

It has been two years, one month and 18 days since the tragic events happened. This is the worst tragedy to hit Donegal in this century - 10 innocent people ranging from five-years-old to 59-years-old lost their lives that terrible day.”

Acknowledging Monday’s meeting was the first time he had spoken publicly about the Creeslough victims and their families, Cllr McBrearty said he had been approached for advice by The Harper family at the beginning of this year.

He said:

I have listened to them about their concerns and what has happened over the last two years. My advice to them was that they needed an independent statutory judicial public inquiry - that is what they needed to focus on if they wanted the full truth about what happened that terrible day.
As county councillors in local government we are given a mandate by the people to represent them on a wide range of issues. As the Great Irish American Politician Thomas Tip O’Neil once said “all politics is local”.
Today we must put our political and personal differences to the one side in the interests of these families and the victims.
We must try and understand that these families are heartbroken because they have endured the loss of the people they loved most in their lives.

The Independent Raphoe councillor said he could not imagine what it was like to lose a family member in such a terrible and untimely way.

“We all lose people we love at some time in our lives, but we never expect it to be in the way it happened in Cresslough,” he said.

Turning to his call for an independent statutory judicial public inquiry, Cllr McBrearty conceded some people might say it was “a waste of time”.

“We will hear the usual arguments against a tribunal - they are a waste of time, go on for too long.”

“Maybe they do,” said Cllr McBrearty, “and certain aspects of our media may agree and they are entitled to their opinions.

However, as the only public representative in this Council chamber and county today who has the experience of participating in a tribunal of inquiry, It is my firm opinion this is the only way the Creeslough families will ever get any justice worth talking about.
The one thing that these families will never be able to get back is their loved ones who were taken away from them unlawfully on October 7, 2022.
Why did this happen and who is to blame? Those are two of the most important questions, in my opinion, which must be answered by the State. Of course there are many other questions that need answering as well and only a public inquiry can deliver this.
When our Government does have the courage to establish this much needed tribunal, it has a moral obligation to ensure it is independent; the terms of reference are open; and that the families of the victims are legally represented and guaranteed full legal aid, on a par with those who will be represented by the State directly and indirectly.

There are currently a number of ongoing investigations into the Creeslough explosion.

Cllr McBrearty said certain commentators might use the excuse a tribunal could not be established until these were concluded.

He added:

This is completely incorrect. I know because the precedent was set when the Morris Tribunal was established in March 2002, while a number of Garda Investigations, Garda Complaints Board investigations, Criminal and Civil Court cases were ongoing.
None of these interfered with the other because each had its statutory obligations and remits. This sets the legal precedent which allows our next Government to establish the public inquiry to which the Creeslough families are entitled.

Giving an insight into his struggles with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to what he described as “an injustice”, Cllr McBrearty said he knew and understood what the Creeslough families were dealing with on a daily basis. He added: 

The mental health issues, such as panic attacks, anxiety, flashbacks, eating disorders, depression, suicide and much more which are associated with PTSD are just some of the things and feelings that these families will endure for many years to come.
“Time is a healer’, they say but I am not sure this is the case. It is okay not to be okay. However, until these families are given the full truth about why and what happened to their loved ones that terrible day, only then will it be okay. Maybe then they will be able to get back to some sort of normality.
I have been assured by Charlie Ward that if he is elected to Dáil Éireann he will fight to get a tribunal established by the next Government.
I am also calling on the local and national media to ask our General Election candidates to give a firm commitment - if they are elected on Friday, November 29, they too will fight to ensure an independent statutory judicial public inquiry is established into the Creeslough Explosion within the first 100 days of our new Government.
The truth and nothing but the truth is the only thing that will set these families free from their pain and suffering they are enduring every day without their loved ones. The worst form of injustice is pretend justice and that is why the elected members must fully support these families today.

If the incoming Government does not establish a public inquiry into the Creeslough explosion within the next six months, Cllr McBrearty pledged to re-submit his motion “again and again until they do the right thing by these families”.

He added:

There is a Latin proverb which runs ‘Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum’ - Let Justice be done though the Heavens fall. If our new Government does not establish a public inquiry into the Creeslough explosion, the Heavens will fall.

The full text of Cllr Frank McBrearty’s motion to Donegal County Council

I am requesting that the new incoming Government establish within its first 100 days an Independent Statutory Judicial Public Inquiry with an open terms of reference into the explosion in Cresslough, Co Donegal that Killed 10 people on the 7th Oct 2022, and I am calling on all the elected members of Donegal County Council to support my motion for this much needed Public Inquiry.

⏪Hugh O’Donnell is on the ground in Donegal.

Donegal County Council Calls For Creeslough Public Inquiry Within Government’s First 100 Days In Office

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