Ireland’s Antisemitic Blindspot ‘Wearing the Green Jersey’ |
Ireland’s Antisemitic Blindspot
“Wearing the Green Jersey”
With the grim stories of alleged Israeli abuse of the Irish Flotilla activists relayed on Irish television and radio in the rearview mirror – although no doubt those stories will be recounted by some for a generation- Ireland seems doomed to entangle itself in Holocaust metaphors to criticize Israel.
Margaret Connolly, the sister of the Irish President, described her few days’ detention as the “horror of a concentration camp”. The language not only risks belittling the Jewish experience of concentration camps, but also ironically diminishes the experience of Palestinians living in tented encampments under the risk of bombardment for more than two years.
Invoking the language of the Holocaust to attack Israel is not new. Invoking the Holocaust to rebut antisemitism is altogether a trickier sort of argument. Yet very recently, we saw just that in the Irish Times.
Justine McCarthy, a veteran columnist, wrote a piece titled “Ireland and its people stand accused of being antisemitic… it is a vile accusation; the guilting of Ireland is in full throat.”
Uncharacteristic hyperbole for the Irish Times. Perhaps a case of “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
The argument opened with a graphic account of lice infestation in Auschwitz, drawn from the book The Postcard. We are then told: “Even as Irish booksellers restock their shelves to satisfy customers’ requests for The Postcard, Ireland’s people stand accused by some prominent commentators of being antisemitic.”
The inference is that because some Irish readers engage with Holocaust literature, Ireland either........