I have a photograph, circa 1908, of my great-grandmother, Perla Rozenblum with a group of friends, aged 18 in Vienna at the tombstone of Theodor Herzl, the godfather of modern Zionism who died in 1904.
How this group of Jewish friends from Poland found themselves there, I cannot be sure. Forty years before the founding of the state of Israel, Zionism was certainly less definable than today. Zionism is the right of self-determination for Jews in their ancestral homeland and the locus of their religion.
Zionism, as perceived by Herzl, saw a homeland as neither a state nor exclusive to Jews. It remains, in the words of the writer Howard Jacobson, a hundred different dreams.
Perla and her husband, Dawid Lasocky, died before the horror of the Holocaust in Lodz. Their son-in-law, Pawel Rozenfeld, my grandfather, was not a committed Zionist. A secular Jew, he saw the future of his family rooted in Poland, despite growing anti-Jewish hostility which included racist laws enacted in 1935.
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Many Jews decided to leave Poland, creating a pre-war diaspora of Polish Jewry in England, France, America and Palestine and other counties. Those fleeing to Palestine were not universally Zionist ideologues; many were seeking refuge among their own. For Pawel, his optimism betrayed him. Nazi occupation saw him murdered in November 1939.
Since October 7th, a new wave of anti-Semitism has swept the world. My family legacy ensures that I am no stranger to the forces that promote anti-Semitism, nor how quickly it attaches itself to negative events. The current war has created anti-Zionist sentiment which has spilled over into the vilification of Jews globally.
In Ireland, vehement opposition to Israel and Zionism, in particular, has seen demonstrations with expressions that are anti-Semitic, an accusation always denied by those protesting. On the campus of UCD, a sign rippling with historical irony read, ‘Zionist-Free Zone’ .
The term Judenfrei, which it echoes, refers to zones which Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution, sought to establish in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe, by deporting Jews from those areas and murdering them.
Trinity College students’ union also declared that Zionists were not welcome on campus. At the height of the stand-off, Jewish students were offered a safe room if they felt they were in danger. I wondered if it was the attic.
A Jewish writer friend of mine told me that she was asked by the organisers of a festival if she was a Zionist. Answering affirmatively saw her invitation cancelled, a story that has been repeated throughout every sector. For diaspora Jews who have been cancelled, insulted and attacked, contemporary Zionism may once again be defined as a refuge, the one place where they can live safely, however improbable that may seem in the current crisis.
The song, Palestine, which folk singer Christy Moore has been singing for months deserves special mention. Written by Seattle-based Jim Page, it starts: “the Jews and the Arabs lived all the same for 1,000 years until the Zionists came . . .” This is ahistorical demonising of Zionists who, the song goes on, “came in a river and a flood”.
The Zionists who came in “a river and a flood” were Jews persecuted first in pre-war Europe and they also comprised the sorry remnants of the Holocaust, including some of my family. The Zionists who came from the Middle East were expelled from neighbouring Arab countries, mirroring the Palestinian Nakba, from 1946 until 1980, by which time 850,000 Mizrahi Jews had been displaced. These Jews did not have any concept of colonisation; they were all refugees.
There’s more.
“They talk about dollars,” the lyrics continue, which obviously refers to (Jewish) American support of Israel, a dog whistle to the cliched, seemingly evergreen anti-Semitic tropes of dual loyalty and the centuries-old conspiracy theory concerning Jews and money.
The word “jackboot” referring to Israeli behaviour towards Palestinians is the single most jarring note of the song. This is unreconstructed Holocaust inversion. The equivocation of Nazi oppression of Jews to the oppressive behaviour of the Israeli state in the occupied territories towards Palestinians minimises the Holocaust and dispossesses Jews of the worst suffering in their history, still in living memory, ratcheting up hatred towards all Jews, regardless of their political bent.
Christy Moore approached me two years ago when he was about to release 1942, a song about the arrival of a trainload of deported Jews to Auschwitz. He wanted reassurance that he had not unwittingly trampled on sensibilities. I was grateful that he had been so thoughtful and, even more so, when he offered me the song to use in my own advocacy.
I wrote to him expressing my horror at the lyrics of Palestine. I also explained my confusion that he wanted affirmation for the first song but not the second. His reply was courteous and gracious, stating that the song had been sent to him to perform at a gig in aid of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which he said came about after three MSF doctors died in an Israeli air strike on their hospital. He said that he had been accused of being both an anti-Semite and a Hamas supporter, an accusation I do not make.
However, I am sure that Hamas are not unhappy with the song. Christy did not answer my questions. I told him that his song makes me want to leave Ireland. He wished me well. He continues to play Palestine.
In extremis, Zionism – like any other form of nationalism – has a racist and bigoted element. In Israel this represents about 7 per cent of the population. The continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank is illegal, unjustified and morally repellent.
But the assault on Zionism has now blurred into full scale anti-Semitism. Why are Jews, alone, not entitled to express their identity through their ancient connection to their homeland? Howard Jacobson again: “The Jews are the most racially abused people in history. To deny them the right to be who they are is racism. Anti-Zionism is itself racism.”
The equivocation of Zionism to nazism is now frequently invoked. I want Israel, where half the world’s Jewish population live, to exist. I want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a return of the hostages, an end to regional hostilities and a sustainable, just peace settlement for Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution. This does not make me a Nazi. Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.
Oliver Sears is founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland
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