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Objecting to Israeli actions in Gaza is not an anti-Jewish stance

Condemning legitimate criticism of Israel will not aid search for peace

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott
The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.
Sat Aug 24 2024 - 00:12

Sir, – I am an anti-Zionist Jew, like many more Jews in Ireland and abroad. Growing numbers of Jews disagree with Oliver Sears (“Christy Moore sang Palestine and I wanted to leave Ireland”, Opinion & Analysis, August 22nd ). We do not identify with an increasingly racist Jewish state.

It is telling that there were Jews at all the events where Mr Sears claims that Jews were in danger – the Trinity College and UCD encampments, the Palestine solidarity demonstrations. We weren’t simply present, we helped organise them. How could we do otherwise when we see in the mass graves and bombed-out hospitals of Gaza, in the torture camps of Israel, precisely where an ethnonationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine has led to.

We will continue to stand with our Irish and Palestinian brothers and sisters. For let us be clear – anti-Zionism is anti-racism. – Yours, etc,

Dr DAVID LANDY,

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Department of Sociology,

Trinity College Dublin,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – As an anti-Zionist Jew visiting Ireland, I was frustrated to read Oliver Sears’s complaint about anti-Zionism.

Zionism is not, as Mr Sears writes, “the right of self-determination for Jews in their ancestral homeland and the locus of their religion”. It is a belief that Israel should be a Jewish-supremacist ethnostate with fewer or no rights for Palestinians, even though it occupies what is – in living memory – is the ancestral homeland of Palestinians. Objecting to this bigotry, and to the IDF’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians since October 7th, is not anti-Jewish hatred. It is an obligation that motivates Jewish groups, including Jewish Voice for Just Peace-Ireland, Na’amod (England), Jewish Voice for Peace (US), and Independent Jewish Voices (Canada), to which I belong.

Mr Sears takes offence at comparisons between Zionism and Nazism, but many anti-Zionist Jews have become activists precisely because they see the similarities between Palestinians’ suffering and their own ancestors’ dehumanisation and mass murder during the Holocaust.

“I want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” writes Mr Sears. So do we: condemning legitimate criticism of Israel, as found in Jim Page’s song, won’t bring it about. – Yours, etc,

LAUREN WEINBERG,

Ontario,

Canada.

Sir, – Oliver Sears makes many valid points in his piece on Zionism and Christy Moore’s singing of the song Palestine.

It is, however, too simple to say “Zionism ... (which) has a racist and bigoted element ... represents about 7 per cent of the (Israeli) population. The continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank is illegal, unjustified and morally repellent”. The point here is that this supposed 7 per cent of the Israeli population is in charge, and is permitting settler violence, destruction of Palestinian property, etc, in the occupied territories, not to mention what is happening in Gaza.

Mr Sears’s defence of Zionism will fall on deaf ears while the current Israeli government lays waste to Gaza, the West Bank and their peoples. – Yours, etc,

JOHN McCABE,

Dublin 18.

Sir, – Attempts to draw parallels between violent acts committed by Nazi Germany and a group of students fighting for peace and justice are disingenuous at best or inflammatory at worst. When Oliver Sears equates a Zionist-free zone with a Jewish-free zone, he erases the Jewish students who planned, organised, participated in, and negotiated on behalf of the UCD encampment. We appreciate that the image of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist, and other students working, living, eating, cleaning, singing, and even praying together for a free Palestine may not fit his narrative, but it is the reality that UCD staff and students lived from May to June. – Yours, etc,

ÉABHA HUGHES,

(On behalf of UCD Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement),

Dublin 12.