Antisemitism in Ireland ‘Blatant and Obvious’ in Wake of Hamas Onslaught, Says Jewish Former Cabinet Minister Alan Shatter

There is little doubt in Alan Shatter’s mind that over the last five months, his native Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”

A former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014, first as Minister for Justice and Equality and then as Minister of Defense, Shatter is one of the best known products of Ireland’s tiny Jewish community. A lawyer by trade, he spent much of his political career helping to reform Ireland’s archaic legal system. As one of the few Jewish politicians in Ireland’s history, Shatter was invariably a reliable supporter of Israel and wider Jewish causes, helping to found the Irish Soviet Jewry Committee to assist Jews in the Soviet Union attempting to flee communist persecution for a new life in Israel during the Cold War. “We used to make phone calls from my home to Jewish refuseniks in Moscow and Leningrad,” Shatter recalled during an extensive interview with The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “My Dad would speak to them in Yiddish.”

Shatter’s family came to Ireland via the same route that brought Jews escaping the killing fields of Poland and Russia to western Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1912, his father’s family left the city of Lodz for London. Shatter’s father was born in the city’s East End, where many Jewish immigrants first settled. Then, in 1948, he traveled to Ireland to visit his brother, who was living in Dublin. By coincidence, a young Jewish woman from England happened to be visiting her relatives who lived in the house next door. Spotting each other over a garden fence, the two quickly fell in love, got married, and elected to stay in Dublin, where Alan was born in 1951.

Shatter has pleasant memories of growing up as a Jew in the Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s. “There was a minimal amount of antisemitism,” he recalled. “I got called a ‘dirty Jew’ by a kid in my street, but there weren’t any major issues.” Most of his friends as a teenager were drawn from the Jewish community, many of whom attended the same Church of Ireland high school as Shatter.

Shatter’s entry into Irish politics came from a “mixture of idealism and stupidity,” he remarked wryly. As one of the most promising law students at Trinity College in Dublin, he avoided student politics but became deeply involved in social justice causes. In the 1970s, he threw himself into the work of Ireland’s Free Legal Advice Centers (FLAC), eventually becoming the voluntary group’s chairman.

During that period, Shatter remembered, Ireland was largely sympathetic to Israel, which was perceived as a plucky underdog surrounded by predatory Arab states. But with the advent of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, which brought about the intensification of the conflict between the British troops occupying the six counties and Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists, that view of Israel has shifted dramatically.

Shatter cited the close relationship between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the IRA, which dispatched its operatives to the Middle East for military training in Palestinian camps, as a key factor. “Their strong bond, which still exists, was reflected in these huge murals in nationalist areas expressing solidarity with the Palestinians,” he said. “These were not about peace, they were about denigrating Israel. They identified with them because they believed the IRA were fighting British colonists and the Palestinians were fighting Israeli colonists.” Central to this position was the refusal of the IRA and Sinn Fein, its political wing, to recognize that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. “They regard the Israelis as colonial invaders,” he said.

For much of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which came to an end in the late 1990s, Sinn Fein attracted little support in the 26 counties in the south of the island that formed the Irish Republic. The nationalist turn to elections and political engagement transformed their fortunes, however, so that now Sinn Fein “is the largest opposition party in Ireland, with 28-30 percent support, and they could form the next government,” said Shatter.

Hardline anti-Zionist positions were introduced into Irish politics by Sinn Fein as well as by smaller, far left parties who traffic in what Shatter calls the “Corbyn perspective” — the uncompromising hostility to Israel exemplified by the former leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, who is also a close ally of Sinn Fein. In Shatter’s view, the positions of Sinn Fein — which he denounces as a “pseudo-fascist party masquerading as left-wing” — have spread into the rest of Irish society. “The way politics has evolved has contaminated the public perspective on Israel,” Shatter observed. “It’s trendy in the universities and in the media to be anti-Israel, and you’re almost a pariah if you’re not.”

The present coalition government in Dublin does not share these positions, but neither does it disavow them, Shatter said. While Sinn Fein and left-wing parties like People Before Profit and the Social Democrats regularly push for boycotts of Israel and the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador, the government demurs, yet always cites practical considerations rather than moral principles to articulate its own stance. “They’ll say that we’re restrained by our EU membership on the matter of boycotts, so it’s unlawful to do so unilaterally, but not that doing so is wrong,” he said. Similar logic explains the continuing presence of an Israeli Embassy in Dublin.

Since the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 200 seized as hostages amid atrocities that included mass rape, the mood in Ireland towards Israel has darkened even further. The Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), which has mobilized tens of thousands of demonstrators who protest against Israel every week, is vocally pushing for a comprehensive boycott while targeting influential Irish citizens deemed insufficiently pro-Palestinian. Shatter cited the example of the Irish soccer star Robbie Keane, who now coaches Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Israeli league, as the recipient of constant criticism and hostile abuse.

In tandem with the loathing of Israel is a reluctance to even name, let alone criticize, Israel’s regional adversaries like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and their backers in the Iranian regime, Shatter said. The government “never criticizes Iran or Hamas, even when they condemn Oct. 7,” he remarked. “When calling for hostages to be released, they don’t mention Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah. Ireland, which likes to pretend to be neutral, has evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the EU.”

Shatter pointed out that several leading Irish politicians, including Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, have traveled to the US this week in advance of this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations bearing a strongly anti-Israel message. Speaking in Boston on Monday night, Varadkar delivered an emotionally-charged address, condemning Israel for allegedly imposing “collective punishment” on the Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza and pointing to the humanitarian cost of the conflict. “The life of a child is the greatest gift of all,” he said. “Childhood should be a blessing. Today in Gaza, for so many it is a death sentence and a curse.”

Varadkar went on to say that “Ireland will continue to call for an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and a massive and sustained increase in humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. We will also continue to call and to work for a meaningful political pathway leading to self-determination for the Palestinian people. A fully fledged nation for their own people in the land of their forefathers.”

Americans are now hearing a message that is regularly broadcast in Ireland, Shatter said. Government representatives “don’t mention the tunnels, the rockets, the human shields, the relationship between any ceasefire and the release of the hostages. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Iran are never singled out. The Israeli Ambassador is nearly always subjected to hostile interviews, in contrast to the Palestinian representative.”

Shatter’s own media profile, once extensive, has been diminished as a direct consequence. “I’ve been practically canceled by the radio and TV stations where I used to appear regularly,” he said. “And because the Irish media is united in criticism, when they interview people from the government, they never ask about Iranian meddling.”

Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious,” Shatter said. There is little sympathy for the right of the Jews to national self-determination, despite the fact that “Sinn Fein fights for exactly this for the Irish,” he noted. A storied writer who has published several books, Shatter’s latest manuscript — provocatively titled “So You Have a Problem With Jews?” — remains unpublished, with one imprint informing him that he was being turned down because “there’s no interest” in Ireland on the topic of antisemitism.

Yet antisemitism is an unmistakable presence in Ireland’s current political discourse. “There’s no insight within the political establishment of the impact of Oct. 7 on the Jewish community in Ireland, and on me personally,” he said. “They don’t care about the impact on the community of this vicious anti-Israel rhetoric or the thousands of demonstrators marching against Israel.” Even so, Shatter has not given up the lonely life of an Israel advocate in Ireland, despite being subjected to endless opprobrium on social media for his efforts. “I’m subjected to a continuous stream of vile abuse and commentary,” he said. “I see that as an illustration of what is happening now in Ireland.”

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