RSS
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.
RSS
Al Jazeera Hit With Defamation Lawsuit by Syrian Jewish Ex-Refugee
The Al Jazeera Media Network logo is seen on its headquarters building in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon
A defamation lawsuit was filed against the Qatar-based Al Jazeera media network on Wednesday by Abraham Hamra, a Syrian pro-Israel advocate and lawyer.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Hamra “is a Jewish refugee from Syria, born in Damascus. He fled Syria with his parents and siblings in 1994 at the age of eight, following the partial lifting of restrictions on Jewish emigration by the Syrian regime under President Hafez al-Assad in 1992.”
The Algemeiner obtained a copy of the complaint, which explains that, on Aug. 25, Al Jazeera posted a video claiming that Hamra was paid by the Israeli government to visit an aid site of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israel- and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, operating independently from UN-backed mechanisms.
“This accusation is false in its entirety. Plaintiff has never received any payment, compensation, or financial incentive from the Israeli government or any affiliated entity for visiting aid sites in Gaza,” the lawsuit claims.
“The visit by Plaintiff related to Israel and Gaza was undertaken independently, in his personal capacity, on his own dime, as an advocate for his community and to bear witness against misinformation,” the suit continues.
The UN and critics of Israel have expressed concerns that the GHF’s approach forces civilians to risk their safety by traveling long distances across active conflict zones to reach one of its four food distribution points, at times creating chaotic scenes where Israeli forces have used gunfire to control the crowd.
However, supporters of the GHF argue that it bypasses the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which often steals humanitarian supplies for its own purposes and sells the rest at inflated prices. The GHF has called on the UN to publicly condemn the killing of aid workers in Gaza and to collaborate in order to provide relief to the enclave’s population, accusing the UN of perpetuating a “vast disinformation campaign” aimed at tarnishing the foundation’s image.
The lawsuit notes that the social media post from Al Jazeera, which included the image of Hamra, “cites no sources for the ‘reportedly paid’ claim, and publicly available information about Plaintiff, including his professional bio, social media posts, and known activities, demonstrates he is an independent US attorney with no financial ties to foreign governments.”
Al Jazeera also “failed to conduct even basic fact-checking, such as contacting Plaintiff for comment or verifying the allegation, despite their status as a major media network with resources to do so,” according to the lawsuit.
Al Jazeera did not respond to a request for comment from The Algemeiner.
The lawsuit argues why the allegedly false claim rises to the level of libel, saying it “constitutes libel per se under New York law because it accuses Plaintiff of committing a serious crime, namely, violating FARA [the Foreign Agents Registration Act] by acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Israel, and tends to injure him in his profession as a lawyer.”
“FARA requires individuals acting as agents of foreign principals to register with the US Department of Justice, and failure to do so is a federal offense punishable by fines and imprisonment,” the suit says. “By falsely alleging Plaintiff was paid by a foreign government to promote its interests, the statement implies criminal conduct and undermines his professional integrity.”
Consequently, Hamra is seeking payment for damages of at least $1,00,000 and requesting a trial by jury.
Read the lawsuit here: Hamra v Al Jazeera ECF No. 1 Complaint
RSS
US Lawmakers Launch Investigation Into Wikipedia Over Claims of Systemic Anti-Israel Bias
US Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). Photo: Reuters
The US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has opened an investigation into the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the popular online encyclopedia to spread anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic narratives.
Republican Reps James Comer (KY), who chairs the committee, and Nancy Mace (SC), who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on cybersecurity, information technology, and government innovation, on Wednesday sent a letter to Maryana Iskander, chief executive of the Wikimedia Foundation, asking the nonprofit to turn over records showing how the platform polices disinformation campaigns that target articles related to Israel and the Middle East.
The lawmakers cited studies showing that pro-Russia networks and other state-backed operations have sought to manipulate Wikipedia entries on conflicts involving Israel, often by inserting anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway Western audiences. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for example, published a report earlier this year arguing that “malicious” Wikipedia editors have inserted anti-Israel bias onto the site, oftentimes violating the organization’s neutrality policies in the process.
Meanwhile, a report from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found evidence of Russian-linked attempts to shape narratives used to train AI chatbots by twisting information about Israel.
“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the efforts of foreign operations and individuals at academic institutions subsidized by US taxpayer dollars to influence US public opinion,” Comer and Mace wrote. They emphasized the importance of stopping organized attempts to “inject bias into important and sensitive topics.”
Specifically, the committee is demanding records on possible coordination by nation-states or academic institutions to influence Wikipedia pages, internal arbitration files documenting how the site has handled editor misconduct, identifying data for accounts flagged for suspicious activity, and any analysis showing patterns of manipulation tied to antisemitism or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The letter also requests details of Wikipedia’s editorial policies to ensure neutrality and prevent the spread of bias.
Although the committee acknowledged that most online platforms face disinformation threats, the letter stressed that Wikipedia’s outsized influence as one of the most visited websites in the world and a key training source for artificial intelligence systems makes it especially important to prevent anti-Israel narratives from taking root unchecked.
The Wikimedia Foundation has previously stated that it takes action against volunteer editors who violate neutrality rules, but lawmakers say further transparency is needed to guarantee accountability.
However, a detailed investigation by Pirate Wires in October 2024 revealed that a powerful group of roughly 40 Wikipedia editors coordinated to “delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and reshape the narrative around Israel with alarming influence,” particularly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Notably, one editor removed mention of Hamas’s 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the Hamas article just six weeks after the attack. The group also reportedly sought to suppress documented human-rights abuses by Iran, and a related effort by a Discord-based collective known as “Tech For Palestine” coordinated mass editing of articles related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to a report by the Jewish Journal, Wikipedia’s arbitration committee (ArbCom) permanently banned two editors outright for engaging in off-platform coordination tied to the “Tech for Palestine” Discord campaign, citing violations of policies. Additionally, the committee imposed indefinite topic bans on eight editors in the Israeli-Palestinian area for disruptive behavior such as non-neutral editing, personal insults, and misrepresentation of sources. In December 2024, ArbCom permanently banned two anti-Israel editors and placed restrictions on three others for violation of site policies in the Israeli-Palestinian topic area.
RSS
Tunisian Brothers to Face Trial for Cutting Down Olive Tree Honoring Murdered Jew Ilan Halimi in France
A crowd gathers at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in Paris on Feb. 14, 2021, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Halimi’s kidnapping and murder. Photo: Reuters/Xose Bouzas/Hans Lucas
Two Tunisian twin brothers have been arrested in France after allegedly cutting down an olive tree that had been planted to honor Ilan Halimi, a young French Jewish man tortured to death nearly a decade ago.
According to the Bobigny prosecutor’s office, two 19-year-old undocumented men with prior convictions for theft and violence were arrested for vandalizing Halimi’s memorial in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine.
Both brothers appeared in criminal court on Wednesday and were remanded in custody pending their trial, scheduled for Oct. 22.
They will face trial on charges of “aggravated destruction of property” and “desecration of a monument dedicated to the memory of the dead on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” offenses that, according to prosecutors, carry a sentence of up to two years in prison.
Both suspects were taken into custody around noon on Monday while returning to the crime scene, French media reported.
Investigators tracked them down after discovering two slices of watermelon left by the perpetrators at the base of the olive tree, which contained their DNA.
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, Halimi was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. Earlier this month, the memorial was found felled — probably with a chainsaw — in the northern Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine.
Halimi’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne, where he was found dying near a railway track.
Hervé Chevreau, the mayor of Épinay, announced that a new memorial tree will be planted in the second half of September.
After the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the incident, vowing that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
“Felling the tree in honor of Ilan Halimi is a second attempt on his life,” the French leader said in a post on X.
Halimi’s sister, Anne-Laure Abitbol, also condemned the incident, warning that public denunciations are no longer enough and calling for concrete action.
“In France, we are no longer safe, neither alive nor dead,” Abitbol told RTL in an interview.
“I feel less safe in France,” she said. “By recognizing a Palestinian state, Macron is encouraging antisemitism and failing to take action against antisemitic attacks in the country.”
Last month, Macron announced that France will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September as part of its “commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Israeli officials have criticized the move, which was followed by several other Western countries, calling it a “reward for terrorism.”
France’s Jewish community has faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes they continue to face.
According to the French Interior Ministry, 646 antisemitic incidents were recorded from January to June this year — a drop from the previous year’s first-half record high but a 112.5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023, when 304 incidents were reported.