Sir, – Oliver Sears is right to draw attention to the reality of anti-Semitic incidents in Ireland (“My wife, who is not Jewish, asks me if we’ll know when it’s time to leave Ireland”, Opinion, March 9th). Any harassment, intimidation or abuse directed at Jewish people because they are Jewish is racism and must be condemned clearly and confronted seriously by society and Government alike. Jewish citizens should feel safe and fully at home in Ireland.
However, Sears risks blurring an important distinction when he states that many people have “demonised Israelis, Zionism, Jews and Judaism”. Opposition to Zionism, a political ideology advocating a specifically Jewish state in historic Palestine, is perfectly legitimate and not anti-Semitic.
For many critics, the objection lies in the historical and ongoing consequences of that project, which involves displacement, dispossession and continuing systems of inequality and repression for non-Jewish peoples.
Some Jewish thinkers, historians and religious communities themselves have long opposed Zionism or sharply criticised it for precisely these reasons. Recognising that is important.
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It is also important to state clearly that equating Zionism or the state of Israel with Jewish people as a whole is patently wrong, whether that conflation is made by non-Jews or by Jews. Jewish identity is diverse and cannot be reduced to the ideology or actions of any state, and collapsing that distinction ultimately weakens the fight against anti-Semitism. – Yours, etc,
SÉAMUS WHITE,
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7.
