Colum Kenny: Accusations of anti-Semitism cover a multitude

The Irish patriot Michael Davitt wrote: "Where anti-Semitism stands, in fair political combat, in opposition to the foes of nationality . . . or as the assailant of the economic evils of unscrupulous capitalism anywhere, I am resolutely in line with its spirit and programme."

Remarkably, Davitt wrote this in a book co-published by the American Jewish Publication Society in 1903. Davitt supported Zionism, decrying anti-Semitism in some forms as "a malady laden with the poison of a malignant disease", yet lapsing into stereotypical statements about Jews.

His views on Jews, like those of his Irish nation, were never pure or simple. It was claimed by Daniel O'Connell and other nationalists that Ireland was the only country that never persecuted the Jews, a claim repeated by the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom when he consecrated a new synagogue in Dublin in 1892.

Between 1871 and 1911 the number of Jews in Ireland rose from just 285 to 5,148 as millions fled deprivation and persecution in the Russian empire. Jews still constituted a tiny minority (compared, for example, with 48,000 Muslims in the Republic in 2011) but they faced familiar prejudice.

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James Joyce famously mocked the claim of Irish toleration when his anti-Semitic Orangeman Deasy asked in Ulysses, "Do you know why [the Irish never persecuted Jews]?" and answered: "Because she never let them in. She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter . . . That's why."

This was less true then than it became later, when the new State’s doors were shut to Jews fleeing Nazis. Ireland has a history of welcoming tourists but not welcoming refugees. Once it was Jews, now it is Muslims and Africans crossing the Mediterranean whose effective rejection here sparks too little outrage compared with one sentence about Jews in a Sunday newspaper.

Loaded term

The term “anti-Semitism” is heavily loaded. It can cover a multitude of attitudes, not all of the same kind or intent. Yet even criticism of particular Jews now falls under the shadow of the Holocaust.

When the controversialist Kevin Myers wrote in the Irish edition of Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times this week that "Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price" he voiced a standard stereotype: Jews are Shylocks, like the Irish are drunks.

Stereotypical remarks about people of any nation may stir up hatred or prejudice. It is hard to see how Mr Myers and others did not realise that his words were unduly offensive.

He fashioned a stick with which anyone who disliked his article for other reasons could beat him. He may have offended women at the BBC more than Jews, and complicated Murdoch's commercial relationship with Israel.

Notably, the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland is not whipping but defending Myers. Its statement was a realistic if rare acknowledgement that there are degrees of prejudicial references to Jews. Lumping them all together as anti-Semitism is to risk conflating minor or occasional offence with major and systematic hostility, and ultimately devaluing the concept.

The electric term "anti-Semitism" is sometimes used hastily by those with a particular agenda. For example, Myers's reference to Jews was a gift to people who objected on other grounds to his article, actually about sexism at the BBC. Notably, outrage flowed first and loudest from England. Yet the BBC is the same organisation that for years broadcast "Irish jokes" by the Two Ronnies and others that were based on little else but the notion that Irish people are intractable if amusing apes.

Bullying

And some people deploy the accusation of “anti-Semitism” as a weapon against those who point out the faults of Israel, bullying reasonable critics with its threat.

Sometimes it seems too easy to cause offence. Thus, even as Davitt publicly supported Zionism and spoke up for Jews in Russia, the American Israelite accused him of fostering "the tame submission of the Russian Jews and emigration from the land of their birth" to Palestine.

Leftists and liberals once enthused about the new state of Israel and its kibbutzes. Today their support for Palestine is in some cases laced with aggression against Jews. All prejudice is partly laziness and partly self-regard.

Moderation is the best policy when it comes to referencing nationality. History should teach us that it makes sense to exercise due caution and sensitivity when discussing Jews or any other minority. This need not gag free speech, even when provocative. But we can easily avoid gratuitous statements based on racial or religious stereotypes.