‘Vast majority of Ireland’s Jewish community do not support Netanyahu’

• Published date: 15 April 2024
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

“The [Irish-Jewish] community spans the whole spectrum of the political divide. However, I am positive that the vast majority do not support Netanyahu or his clinging to power by bringing into government the right-wing elements of Israeli society,” says Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, when asked what Irish Jews think of the Israeli prime minister

“Nor do they agree with his handling of the war in Gaza. However, whenever I ask any person, whether from the Jewish community or even Irish politicians, as to how as prime minister of a country that had been subjected to the most outrageous premeditated planned attack they would deal with the situation, they generally agree that it would be to eliminate the perpetrators even though they hide behind their own citizens, hide under and in schools and in and under hospitals,” Cohen adds.

Cohen has been a leading spokesman for Ireland’s Jewish community, along with Oliver Sears, founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland. The latter is more blunt in his assessment of the Israeli prime minister.

“Netanyahu has a very poor approval rating among most Jews and has caused enormous issues for the diaspora during his almost 16 years of government. He is the worst thing to have happened to the state of Israel since its foundation,” says Sears.

At the 2022 census, there were 2,193 Jews in Ireland, a community whose highest number in the state was 3,907 (in 1946) and which is noted for its involvement with Irish life, including politics, the law, medicine, and the arts.

In his 1998 book, Jews in 20th Century Ireland, the late UCC historian Dermot Keogh said it revealed “that the community has contributed disproportionately to its numbers”. In 2016, President Michael D Higgins spoke of “the commitment and dynamism of Ireland’s small Jewish community, a community that has made, and continues to make, such a rich contribution to the life of this island – to Irish arts, professions and politics”.

However, since the war in Gaza began, Ireland’s Jewish community has been feeling pressure from wider public opinion. Cohen and Sears spoke to The Irish Times in recent days – prior to the weekend escalation of regional violence, with Iran’s attack on Israel – about the mix of emotions experienced by Ireland’s Jews over the past six months.

Cohen says the October 7th events “have had an enormous effect on the Irish-Jewish community, which is made up, not only those of us who perhaps go back five or six...