“We do not hate Jews!”

TODAY’S BLOG

“We Do Not Hate Jews!”

So where has your humble servant been for the last 12 days?

In Ireland. 

Ireland may seem like an odd place for a pro-Israel advocate to visit given the constant drumbeat of anti-Israel rants that emanate from Irish politicians–especially from the Mayor of Dublin and others.

But Dublin is precisely where I wanted to go because Dublin is the home of Bloomsweek, a 7 day celebration of the life and times of James Joyce–one of your humble servant’s two favorite writers.

Bloomsweek culminates on June 16 each year–Bloomsday–at the James Joyce Center in Dublin. It focuses on Joyce’s remarkable Ulysses and features readings, songs, and plays based on the book.

For those unfamiliar with the novel, Ulysses takes place on one day–June 16, 1904. The main character in the book is Leopold Bloom, a lapsed Jew. Even though he has been baptized as a Catholic, Bloom’s sense of self is entirely Jewish, and he views the people he meets through Jewish eyes. The people he interacts with during the day think of him as a Jew and regularly hurl anti-Semitic insults his way.

What seems to have been forgotten in the one hundred years since the novel first appeared is that Joyce’s novel is a scathing condemnation of Irish anti-Semitism. This anti-Semitism may have played a part in the fact that Joyce lived most of his life as an exile.

Judging from the recent anti-Israeli actions of the mayor of Dublin, Mícheál MacDonncha, it is an anti-Semitism alive and well in Ireland today.

It was in this context that we went to Dublin to celebrate Joyce, and we weren’t terribly surprised to first sight the Palestinian flag flying up and across the street from the Joyce Center.

The Palestinian flag high on a building.

What building was it on?

No surprise.

We expected to see numerous other such flags during our twelve day stay.

But we were surprised. Pleasantly so.

We only saw 3 more–two in Galway as I will describe below, and another on a flagpole outside someone’s home deep in rural County Cork.

And, unlike what we expected, we were warmly greeted by people everywhere–especially when we said we were Israelis. 

I will finish the blog today with three interesting episodes from our 12 days in Ireland.

The first occurred when we were taken to the old Jewish quarter of Dublin on a Joycean bus tour. As we disembarked the bus at Dublin’s Jewish Museum, we were told by our guide that no Jews still lived there and that the neighborhood has been taken over by Muslim immigrants.

According to our guide, the efforts by the Jewish Museum to expand its facilities have been heavily protested by the Muslims because, he said, the planned structure “doesn’t fit in architecturally with the neighborhood.” Of course, he said, “we can appreciate the protests.”

It didn’t seem to cross his vacant mind that the Muslims are protesting a Jewish building. 

A picture of James Joyce in the Jewish Museum with a little known “detail” from his life.

The second occurred in the pedestrian mall in Galway. Palestinian sympathizers had set up a table complete with Palestinian flags and were encouraging passersby to sign a petition against “Israeli occupation.” No one was stopping to sign.

These people thought I was taking a picture of them because I supported them–until they found out otherwise.

As we passed, we were asked to sign.

At which point, I informed the stunned people at the table that we were Israelis and that we most certainly would not sign because we do not feel that Israel is occupying anything. At this point, we turned to talk away, but one of the men at the table suddenly shouted out: “We do not hate Jews!” (Note that he did not say: “We do not hate Israelis!”).

“We do not hate Jews!”

My response was twofold: first, I walked back and shocked the man by facing him and telling him that what he said is what all anti-Semitic Israel haters say. I told him that he may claim that he does not hate Jews, but for him Israel has become “the Jew” and that people like him are nothing more than anti-Semitic bigots. 

He was literally speechless.

Then, I went into the store that the table was standing in front of and told its representatives that I would not shop there as long as the pro-Palestinian group was out front. They told me that they didn’t agree with the group, but that the group was in a public space and nothing could be done.

Apparently the folks at Flanagan’s weren’t too happy about the Palestinian supporters either.

However, I was happy to see that five minutes later the table was gone. 

The final episode explains why israelstreet has not been published the last few days. It turns out that many businesses, hotels, and other entities subscribe to a company that filters the content from websites.

Israelstreet has been defaultly blacklisted, ostensibly because it deals with “weapons”–but more likely because it presents a pro-Israel viewpoint.

Thus it was impossible to get online for 3 days.

How can we sum up our trip to Ireland? The people were certainly more supportive than we expected, yet anti-Semitism of the type that Leopold Bloom experienced in Ulysses still exists today.