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Antisemitism in Ireland ‘Blatant and Obvious’ in Wake of Hamas Onslaught, Says Jewish Former Cabinet Minister Alan Shatter
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
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.”
The post Antisemitism in Ireland ‘Blatant and Obvious’ in Wake of Hamas Onslaught, Says Jewish Former Cabinet Minister Alan Shatter first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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