‘Enormous global sympathy?’ Is this a joke?

This is either a very malicious lie or the earnest opinion of someone illustrating how woefully out of touch he is. In either case, and I speak as a former admirer, Nicholas has proven that his opinions should be broached with a heavy amount of skepticism.

Let me speak to my own country, Ireland:

1. On October 9th, 2023 there was a march on the Israeli embassy in ‘solidarity with Palestine’. This march included members of Irish parliament, from the People Before Profit party specifically.

2. On the 9th of October, 2023 Trinity College Student’s Union (TCDSU) sent a college-wide email in conjunction with Trinity’s BDS campaign stating:

‘Last week Hamas launched a military operation in response to atrocities that Palestinians have faced over decades’, and that ‘TCDSU stands in solidarity with Palestine, and [implores] you all to do the same’.

3. On the morning of October 7th, while the massacre was still ongoing, a lecturer at Trinity (indeed, an esteemed fellow) posted on on X:

‘Solidarity and strength with those who demand to be free’ accompanied by an image of a Palestinian militant holding up a Palestinian flag with a text underneath saying ‘Free Palestine’.

This post is still up. To my knowledge, he has faced no repercussions for this. By contrast, I was immediately dragged into a meeting with the Junior Dean when I posted about Jewish student’s horror that this lecturer celebrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. I was forced to remove my post and was given a condescending talking to on online conduct.

The lecturer in question continues to be heavily platformed and lauded in his School: the School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies. Yes, you read that correctly.

4. The president of the Postgraduate Workers Organisation of Ireland also celebrated October 7th on X. He wrote:

‘Decolonisation should be celebrated and supported. Liberation from occupation and torturous imprisonment should be embraced by everyone who values justice. Resistance grows out of barbarous oppression, it is beautiful.’

This man was subsequently elected as a local councillor. Yes, *after* he publicly celebrated a massacre he was elected councillor in Ireland.

5. On Instagram, people I’ve known all my life were sharing posts on their stories that served to *at best* justify the massacre. Two of my closest friends didn’t think to message asking if my loved ones were safe, even though they had met and spent the evening with my Israeli best friend the year before. When I messaged one of them on the 12th of October to say how heartbreaking this was, she didn’t respond. We haven’t spoken since.

6. Irish women’s organisations and so-called feminists were completely silent on the use of rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women. Not a whisper. Despite being silent on this subject, Ireland’s National Women’s Council has been extremely vocal in their public statements against Israel. In a statement on October 5th, 2024 they wrote:

‘As the one-year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza approaches, the National Women’s Council (NWC) has called on the government to impose sanctions on Israel, and to push for sanctions at EU and UN level. The organisation, which represents almost 200 women’s groups across Ireland, condemned the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people by the Israeli State at its annual general meeting in June.’

Zero mention of October 7th and the gender-based brutality inflicted on women that day.

7. Posters of Israeli hostages, including children, were viciously ripped down and defaced in my hometown.

I could go on and on.

Nicholas, forgive me: you are either a malicious liar or pitifully ignorant. Perhaps both.

There was precious little sympathy for Israel after October 7th: not for the raped Israeli women, nor the butchered Israeli children. Indeed, the demonic reaction to that day has changed my view on the world forever. And that is just in an Irish context.

In London, on the 8th of October 2023, there were massive public celebrations of the massacre.

At the Sydney Opera House, on the 9th of October 2023, a huge crowd of approximately a thousand burned Israeli flags and, according to several eye witnesses, screamed ‘gas the Jews’. Police audio analysis of video from the event determined that this chant was ‘where’s the Jews’. Either way, highly threatening and a foreshadowing of the antisemitic violence that would later erupt in Australia: last month alone a synagogue was set on fire while worshippers were still inside.

‘Enormous global sympathy’. What a (tragically dark) joke.

The anti-Israel bias espoused by Irish media and Irish politicians has reached indefensible and deeply shameful levels in the past week.

There has been an overwhelming amount of of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, scapegoating, and bald racism.

I’ll list these in this thread: 1. Our Táiniste described the pager attack as a ‘wanton disregard for civilian life’ and ‘indiscriminate’.

This was a surgically precise attack.

Pagers of Hezbollah members detonated individually: with knowledge of who and where they were. It was, by definition, discriminate.

https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1837608484692431226

Speaking with a friend who was incredulous that this cartoon made it to print in the Irish Times. She asked me how.

I gave her the answers I’ve said for months:

1. Antisemitic rhetoric is normalised here. Indeed, it’s lauded if done under the guise of anti Israel sentiment. Think about how many educated people in the Irish Times would have had to see that and deem it appropriate to print.

Not one of them recognised the hooked nose and yellow star as antisemitic? Even if they were ignorant of the more nuanced tropes?

This speaks to normalised…

I’m projected to finish my PhD in March of next year, thus this will be my final Michaelmas term in Trinity.

I feel a cocktail of emotions. What was once a place of joy for me-I often described the Centre for Deaf Studies as my favourite place-is now a place I dread entering. I have written about this for the Jewish Chronicle at length and will not repeat the same sentiments regarding antisemitism here.

Rather, I will say this: Trinity is not a university I would recommend attending. It does not protect vulnerable students.

thejc.com/lets-talk/trin…

I think the decision not to share the videos of the October 7th attacks publicly was a terrible decision made by Israel.

I do not think people comprehend the level of denial that I’ve experienced in Ireland.

At best, people just do not grasp the valence of brutality involved:

the performative sadism and cruelty of the most bestial nature.

I know people disagree.

The primary argument I hear is that ‘we do not parade our slaughtered people in front of the world for their atrocity porn’.

This is one that I understand and empathise with fully.

There may come a point in life where you have to choose between the appearance of goodness and actual goodness.

For me it was October 7th. My heritage plays a large role in why I have been vocal about antisemitism since then. But in fact, more fundamentally, it comes down to… …seeing pure evil with my own eyes on that day and experiencing people around me at best rationalise it, at worst celebrate it.

I am a raised Catholic and there was never any significant danger for me personally.

I am not motivated by self interest. Betraying my heritage…

I deleted my post about the INRI initialism on the crucifix. I am profoundly depressed at the level of historical illiteracy and astounding stupidity in the comments. I can’t read anymore.

You can hate Jews/Israel all you like.

But these are incontrovertible historical facts: 1. Jesus was a Jew. He was born, lived, died, and taught as a Jew.

2. He was from Judea, not from Palestine.

At the time, Palestine did not exist as a place. The Romans changed the name ‘Judea’ to ‘Syria Palaestina’ over 100 years after Jesus’ death.

3. Jesus himself could…

I received pushback for criticising StopAntisemitism for publishing a picture of a minimum-wage employee for wearing a keffiyeh without her consent.

A few thoughts:

1. have a very low tolerance for antisemitism and I take it extremely seriously. But national and cultural… …markers of identity such as the Palestinian flag and the Keffiyey, are not antisemitic.

The IRA committed acts of terrorism underneath the Irish flag and undoubtedly while brandishing Irish symbols and clothing.

This does not take away the fact that this is my flag…

Hey all.

Something deeply upsetting has happened.

A complaint was lodged against me by a lecturer in Trinity as per a tweet of mine in May that I’ve long since deleted (to my knowledge because I can’t find it). This lecturer blocked me despite us never interacting. Not once. He said in the complaint that this is because ‘I try my best to steer clear of “Zionists” online’.

The complaint centres around the fact that I said in my tweet that he had endorsed October 7th.

I never comment on the disputed death toll of civilians in Gaza. It’s exceptionally dehumanising.

As an academic, I do feel compelled to speak out about the widespread unethical reporting that ‘The Lancet estimates’ that there could be 186,000+ future indirect deaths in Gaza.

https://twitter.com/RachelMoiselle/status/1717154883336315019

I see a lot of people referring to the established biases of the authors, but that’s not uncommon regarding I/P and is of less significance to me.

What concerns me is that the ‘article’ being cited is a 1-page letter from the correspondence section, not a peer-reviewed article.

One thing that I’ve had to reckon with over the past few months is the reality that a lot of people now dislike me.

I’m not talking about antisemites, this is a given.

I’m talking about people-notably in the media and academia-who I have no doubt find me intensely irritating. People who knew me before all of this can attest to the fact that I am not a combative/disagreeable person by nature. Quite the opposite.

I have adopted the necessary measures to combat institutional bias and discrimination.

This does not come easily to me and it weighs heavy.

I read this thoughtful article today.

I couldn’t recommend it more.

There are many excellent points in the piece but perhaps the standout is that Dostoevsky said that he has no innate bigotry against Jews, but hates them because of the things they do.

mosaicmagazine.com/essay/arts-cul… It is a really smart insight on the part of the author to point out how, just like Dostoevsky, people today are blind to their own bigotry because they feel as though it is a rational assessment based on news reports of factual events and things certain cohorts have done.

After WWII German women were raped en masse by Soviet troops. Hundreds of thousands of German women.

So many of these would have been Nazis and would have wanted my ancestor’s dead. But I would never deny what happened to them, I would never condone it, and I do have empathy. I’ve been loathe to make this point because of the sickening Holocaust inversion and how morally depraved individuals delight in painting Jews as Nazis.

Nazi women are not comparable Israeli civilians.

My point is that women’s experiences of sexual violence are to be believed.

The people interviewed in the egregious @thetimes article have made a statement.

‘We are shocked and disappointed by the exploitation of our willingness to be interviewed and the attempt to use our expertise to give credence to the reporters' views.’

@thetimes should retract.

https://twitter.com/kaddariruth/status/1799814568660832394

‘The article joins those who are guilty of the unacceptable politicisation of sexual violence. In this instance, the reporters' agenda replaced the professional and ethical commitment to presenting evidence accurately.’

@scribblercat and @gabrielle_sivia should issue an apology.

The grandmother says: ‘want to forget the horrible ways she was abused before they killed her’.

I’m going to write a thread that I promise will be very worth reading if you have a few minutes.

When I was an undergraduate I worked as a research assistant on a European project.

https://twitter.com/scribblercat/status/1799457430784610777

This project sought to improve access to judicial proceedings for deaf people.

Many of the cases in an Irish context for deaf people were Redress Board cases: these were cases whereby victims of institutional abuse in State-run schools sought compensation from the government.

I deleted my thread on the worst experience of antisemitism I endured that occurred on a first date with an Irish man who went on an unprompted tirade about Jewish ‘privilege, power, money’ before knowing my heritage (and then got aggressive at me for not telling him beforehand). I deleted it because of the callous response from an older Irish man who chose to nitpick an opinion (one that every single one of my Jewish friends feels), rather than expressing empathy at this bald-faced racism that truly took a lot out from me to share publicly.

Now that I’m doing a ‘tell all’, I’m going to share the second worst example of antisemitism I experienced in Ireland.

At my former workplace we were having discussions about (old) offensive signs for ethnic groups etc. in Irish Sign Language.

These include, for example: The old sign for ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’. This used to be indicated by the tugging of the eyes, which of course is racist.

Similarly the former sign for ‘Jew’ in many signed languages used to be indicated by drawing a huge hooked nose. A person at my former workplace said to me:

As per this statement, I have been asked how Irish media is biased.

Some issues:

1. Tokenisation (a form of racism). Fringe voices from the Jewish community are tokenised giving a warped perception of community sentiment.

2. One sided narrative regarding Israel/Palestine.

https://twitter.com/holocaust_irl/status/1794367381072154722

This one-sided narrative perhaps most glaringly takes form in the sense that journalists do a lot of pieces on those impacted by the Nakba. In the 20 years following 1948 approx. 850,000 Jews (roughly the same # impacted by the Nakba) were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries.

I see that the head of the Student’s Union retweeted the tweet on the left.

I am thankful that the Irish Times changed the heading (to the one I was informed it would be) on the right.

I am infinitely grateful for the platform the Irish Times gave me. However a few things:

Editors of mainstream newspapers must understand that anyone who dares to speak up against antisemitism in Ireland will be maliciously torn apart for every phrase or word by bad-faith actors who are intent on remaining wilfully obtuse to Jewish humanity, history, and experiences.

Hi @pascoe_phoebe: here’s thread of the violence against Jews at Columbia university that wholly negates your claim that the protest was peaceful.

How awful that on the first night of Passover, you choose to publicly dehumanise Jews by diminishing the violent racism they face.

https://twitter.com/universitytimes/status/1782402345810202689

Number one.

https://twitter.com/mrandyngo/status/1781707821442118121