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Ireland Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Amid Row With Israel
A bicycle with the Palestinian and Irish flags is seen at the University College Dublin (UCD) ‘Palestinian Liberation Encampment’ on June 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Ireland has announced that it will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, an unexpected policy decision which comes amid a surge of Jew-hatred in the country and a downward spiral in relations with Israel.
“Ireland is committed to countering the scourge of racism and hatred and to promoting values of equality, inclusiveness, and the full respect of human rights,” Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said in a statement announcing the move on Thursday. “Combating antisemitism is an increasingly important and visible part of this work. I have been deeply concerned at the current trend of a global rise in antisemitism, both online and offline. The government takes this issue seriously and we will continue to tackle all forms of discrimination.”
He continued, “I believe the step taken today will be an important contribution to these efforts. We will also continue our close relationship with the Jewish community in Ireland and ensure that their concerns are heard.”
Martin later followed his announcement with a tweet which emphasized the IHRA definition’s being “non-legally binding,” a point he made again in reference to Ireland’s additional adoption of the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism, which he also described as “non-legally binding.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US, Israel, and Ireland — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Despite Martin’s announcement, antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense. Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview last year that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”
Ireland has been a fierce critic of Israel since the Hamas atrocious of Oct. 7 and amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced the move and explained the key reason was Ireland’s decision to join South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)and its support for redefining genocide in order to secure a conviction against Jerusalem.
Israel accused the Irish government of undermining Israel at international forums and promoting “extreme anti-Israel policies.”
Ireland has “crossed all the red lines,” Sa’ar told reporters at the time, calling the Irish government’s actions “unilateral hostility and persecution” rather than mere criticism.
The announcement came after Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing the country of “the starvation of children” and “the killing of civilians” — remarks that Sa’ar slammed as “antisemitic” and historically insensitive. Sa’ar also noted how “when Jewish children died of starvation in the Holocaust, Ireland was at best neutral in the war against Nazi Germany.”
Those comments followed the Irish parliament in November passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.”
In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time of Ireland’s recognition of “Palestine” that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
More recently, Harris in October called on the European Union to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed legislation banning the activities in the country of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, because of its ties to Hamas.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, recently released a report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history. The findings showed that the textbooks help foster antisemitism by downplaying the Holocaust, portraying Judaism as a violent religion, and distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to make Israel out to be a villain.
In one example uncovered by Impact-se, a history textbook for eleventh graders describes Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Poland where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II, as a “prisoner of war camp” rather than an “extermination,” “concentration,” or “death camp.” In other textbooks — including Inspire – Wisdom of the World, a religious studies book distributed to students as young as 12 years old — Judaism is described as a war mongering religion which “believes that violence and war are sometimes necessary to promote justice.” Christianity and Islam are more favorably judged as aiming for “peace and justice” and, in the latter, resorting to war only in “self-defense, to defend Islam but not to spread Islam and to protect people who are oppressed.”
Irish curricula is perhaps most aggressive in discussing Israel and the Palestinians, according to Impact-se. Citing Inspire again, the report revealed that the textbook’s authors chose to propagate the misleading claim that Jesus Christ lived in “Palestine,” a piece of disinformation that has been trafficked by anti-Zionist activists both to diminish Jesus’ Jewish heritage and deny the existence of a Jewish state in antiquity.
“Historical references to Jesus living in ‘Palestine’ without appropriate context can contribute to narratives that challenge Israel’s legitimacy and undermine the Jewish historical connection to the land,” wrote Impact-se, which also noted that a textbook for younger children on the story of Jesus included a comic strip with the words, “Some people did not like Jesus.” The people shown in the comic are visibly Jewish, wearing religious clothing such as a kippah.
“This portrayal aligns with antisemitic stereotypes that have wrongly blamed Jews collectively for the death of Jesus,” the group stated.
In recent weeks, the Catholic religious establishment in Ireland has come under scrutiny for targeting Israel. In a New Year’s message last week by Archbishop Eamon Martin, the most senior Catholic figure in Ireland lambasted Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “merciless” and a “disproportionate” response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
Martin was not the first prominent Irish cleric to use his platform to castigate Israel in recent days.
In November, Reverend Canon David Oxley came under fire for delivering an antisemitic memorial sermon in which he suggested that Israelis and Jews see themselves as a “master race” that justifies “eliminating” other groups “because they don’t count.”
Oxley delivered the sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin during a Remembrance Sunday service attended by Irish President Michael Higgins and other high-ranking dignitaries.
Higgins himself has become embroiled in controversy, with representatives of the Irish Jewish community opposing his giving the main speech at the Holocaust remembrance ceremony scheduled for Jan. 26 in Dublin, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Ireland recently saw a disturbing antisemitic hate crime in November, when a Jewish American student visiting the country on holiday was concussed during a gang-assault perpetrated by three men who initiated their encounter with him by demanding to know whether he is Jewish.
Considering the surge of antisemitism in Ireland, its adoption of the IHRA definition is “welcome — if confusing,” one leading UK-based Jewish civil rights group said in a statement responding to the news.
“It remains to be seen whether Irish leaders — and wider Irish society — demonstrates any change in their attitude toward Jews a result of this adoption,” the group, Campaign Against Antisemitism, added.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Ireland Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Amid Row With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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How Canadian Universities Are Allowing Jewish Students to Be Doxxed and Harassed
The Fine Arts Building of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Photo: DXR/Wikimedia Commons
With the rise of the digital age, an entirely new form of harassment and intimidation has emerged. Nameless accounts run by faceless adversaries comment on, post about, and attack others — their identities hidden behind a digital mask.
What’s worse than this anonymous harassment is the increasingly common practice of doxxing, where one’s personal information is released to the public in an effort to intimidate and silence them.
That’s the situation that pro-Israel Jewish Canadians have been facing for over a year — and it threatens free expression, academic integrity, and open discourse.
In the year and a half since October 7, 2023, this harassment has become a common practice on college campuses for students who dare to voice any support for Israel, or criticism of Palestinians or Hamas. My school, McGill University, is no different. Pro-Israel students, Hillel staff, and even McGill security guards have been followed, photographed, and videoed.
A prime example of this phenomenon is the Instagram account, “Shart-Up Nation,” which regularly targets pro-Israel activists and the McGill administration by sharing photos and videos of Jewish students and professionals, and asking followers to find information about them so that they may release it to their 800+ followers.
Their feed and stories are flooded with vicious photos of McGill’s pro-Israel community accompanied by horrible insults, stating that “all Zionists look like this to a certain degree” and comparing Jewish students to an unflattering emoji.
Memes are drenched in antisemitic sentiments — such as one regarding a former hostage’s nose job paralleling the trope of a Jew with a large hooked nose, one suggesting Jews are constantly surveilling people (suspiciously close to the sentiments put forth in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), or even another suggesting that Jews “want to swim in the blood of dead Palestinians,” echoing the age-old blood libel.
This past December, the group came across the Instagram page of another local pro-Israel organization, Allied Voices for Israel. The account manager captured screenshots of students’ faces on an educational trip to Israel, which focused on conversations between Israel and Palestinians “fighting for peace and coexistence.” The doxxers then located their LinkedIn profiles, and posted their academic and personal information along with their full names.
These actions extend far beyond violating privacy — they induce a fear to speak up and make opinions known in the pro-Israel community. It is clear that these actions are a thinly veiled threat — dare to engage in conversation about Israel, no matter if there is nuance, and your professional and personal life will be put at risk.
Despite the vicious posts about students — and the now illegal release of their private information — neither the Concordia nor McGill administration have identified the student perpetrator.
Unfortunately, hiding one’s identity while protesting, chanting some questionable (at best) statements, and performing illegal actions, is nothing new for the pro-Palestinian crowd at McGill.
On October 7th, 2024, students covering their faces with keffiyehs stormed McGill’s campus, pushing down protective barriers and covering school property with graffiti.
Protestors hiding under sunglasses or masks is a common sight on campus. Just recently, a group of masked individuals went so far as to smash over 20 windows in one of McGill’s largest buildings, leaving shards of glass and a terrified student body scattered around campus.
Their masking — and their unwillingness to be associated with their actions — is a tacit acknowledgment that they know what they are doing is wrong. If they were not undertaking destructive, illegal, and harmful actions, why take so much care to hide behind social media accounts and face coverings?
If they truly believe that they are fighting for a just cause and doing it in the correct way, there is no reason that they should feel the need to conceal their involvement or identity. Clearly, then, certain people recognize that their actions place them on the wrong side of history. They know that pushing down fences is not the proper way to instigate social change, that doxxing and humiliating fellow students online is a blatant violation of McGill’s Student Code of Conduct, and that chanting about restarting the “Final solution” while doing a Nazi salute is unacceptable.
If they were proud of their actions, they would not go through so much trouble to hide their identities.
The rise of anonymous harassment and doxxing in Montreal is not just a symptom of political division — it is a threat to the open discourse and academic integrity that is supposed to thrive on college campuses.
And this issue festers in the broader Montreal community as well. The police have yet to make any arrests following extreme acts of vandalism on McGill’s campus in early February; local newspapers misrepresent the facts of the conflict. The mayor of a prominent Jewish community in the city allegedly “tolerates illegal behavior by masked protestors.” McGill and Montreal must break out of this vicious cycle.
If universities fail to address these violations, then they are contributing to a culture where fear reigns supreme and productive dialogue is rendered not just impossible but dangerous. Our institution and our neighbors at Concordia University must take a stand — not just to protect those targeted in today’s world — but for the preservation of open and constructive discourse for generations to come.
Maris Brail is a student at McGill University, pursuing a Joint Honours degree in Jewish Studies and philosophy. As an active member of McGill’s Hillel and Students Supporting Israel executive boards, Maris is committed to fostering a space where Jewish life and advocacy can thrive. She is also a CAMERA on Campus Fellow, dedicated to promoting accurate and fair representations of Israel in academic and media discourse.
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Terror Ties Conveniently Ignored in Lawsuit Accusing British Citizens of Committing ‘War Crimes’ in Gaza
Israeli military jeeps maneuver in Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, Feb. 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The Guardian and the BBC reported that 10 British citizens have been accused of committing war crimes in Gaza. The report in question covers the period from October 2023 to May 2024, and was submitted by three parties: renowned British barrister Michael Mansfield, the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and the British-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC).
Michael Mansfield, nicknamed “Moneybags Mansfield” and dubbed a “Champagne socialist,” built his career on representing underdogs, earning a reputation as a people’s lawyer. That career also brought him substantial financial gain — an income reportedly around £300,000.
This striking contrast between the lawyer’s wealth and his radical rhetoric can raise some concerns regarding his own moral integrity and consistency. But it all pales once compared to the troubling background of the other co-filer of the report.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Its Ties to Terror
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), based in Gaza, is the second entity behind the complaint. According to extensive documentation by NGO Monitor, PCHR has longstanding ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a terror organization designated as such by the EU, US, Canada, and Israel.
The PFLP’s long history includes suicide bombings, shootings, and assassinations. It also played a role in the brutal October 7 attack on Israeli civilians.
Despite all of it, the director of PCHR, has never distanced himself from the terror group. And why would he do it to his dear alma mater? Yes, you read it right. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights’s director was a member of PFLP. In a 2014 statement, years after assuming his leadership role, Sourani said:
I was in the ranks of the Popular Front, and there were comrades who taught us with their own hands. This organization has given us much more. We hope that the direction and the sense of belonging that were planted inside us will remain in our minds. We don’t apologize and don’t regret our past, we are proud that once we were members of this organization and we fought in its ranks. [emphasis added]
So, it comes as no surprise that PFLP members have attended events hosted by PCHR.
And it comes as even less of a surprise that neither The Guardian nor the BBC mentioned PCHR’s ties to terrorists.
British Military Perspective
We asked Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British Army officer and veteran of operations in Afghanistan, to comment on the complaint by Michael Mansfield and PCHR. This is what Colonel Kemp, who was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire and the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery, offered to HonestReporting:
This is a despicable political action intended to reinforce anti-Israel smears and to intimidate Jews in the UK. It is a deliberate falsehood to state that the IDF has been carrying out systematic war crimes. The reality is that Israel does all it can to avoid civilian deaths while fighting in Gaza.
I very much doubt that the allegations against these ten individuals are linked to any specific allegations. It is more likely they are using the names of 10 British citizens who are lawful members of the IDF in the general context of false allegations.
If so, there is no possibility of this action leading to convictions in British courts. These lawyers will know this, and their actions are therefore intended as political warfare against Israel. They also want to harass British Jews and discourage them from joining the IDF, which they are lawfully entitled to join under both British and Israeli law.
The British legal system should reject these shameful applications. Britain and Israel are allies, and Britain benefits enormously from Israeli military and intelligence contributions. If these perverse legal proceedings are entertained by the Metropolitan Police or Crown Prosecution Service, that will be an indictment of the UK itself—and a further blow against our Jewish community, which has been under sustained attack and discrimination by the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas mobs since October 7, 2023.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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The Palestinian Authority Continues to Cozy Up to China, Urges End to US Role in World Affairs
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is greeted by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang during a July 2017 visit to Beijing. Photo: Reuters/Mark Schiefelbein
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to strategically align itself counter to American interests in the greater geopolitical arena.
Earlier this month, Mahmoud Abbas again rejected Taiwan’s independence as he “emphasized that the State of Palestine will continue to stand by its friend, the Peoples Republic of China, and to support the One China policy and the protection of China’s national interests” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 27, 2025].
As opposed to the Western countries that fund the PA, Abbas has consistently stood firmly with China’s dream of conquering Taiwan, as he said last year:
The Palestinian Presidency underlined the significance of preserving China’s territorial integrity, including the status of Taiwan … [and] voiced its firm support for China’s right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, endorsing the reunification of the entire land of China, which includes Taiwan.
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Jan. 13, 2024]
In a letter in January 2023, Abbas Zaki, a senior official in the PA’s ruling Fatah party, also wrote:
I express the stable and well-rooted position of Fatah in its support for the People’s Republic of China against Taiwan, which we consider an integral part of the united Chinese lands.
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, January 8, 2023]
On a greater level, the PA has frequently stressed the idea of a strategic partnership both between China and the PA and China and the Muslim world.
Abbas’ senior advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash says the PA wants to see the end of US world leadership, with the US being pushed aside for a “new multipolar world order” made up of “the Islamic world, Russia and China” to “realize justice.”
The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida recently reported that Abbas also “praised the firm ties between the two states and the depth of the historical and continuous connection between Palestine and China, which has reached a level of strategic relations.”
This follows Al-Hayat‘s report in January 2025 following a meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and the Chinese envoy to the Middle East, when it wrote the following:
President Mahmoud Abbas … expressed his appreciation for China’s positions that support the Palestinian rights in the international forums — which expresses the depth of the historical ties between the two countries and the two friendly peoples. He also expressed his great appreciation for [Chinese] President Xi Jinping and his positions that are committed to tightening the friendly relations, which have strengthened thanks to strategic ties between Palestine and China.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 19, 2025]
In October 2024, the official PA news agency, WAFA, also reported about Abbas’ meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying the meeting “emphasized the significance of the strategic partnership between the state of Palestine and its friend, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” [WAFA, official PA news agency, Oct. 23, 2024].
Similar statements have also been made by other senior PA officials, such as Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, who said in November 2024:
China needs to continue to strengthen its strategic ties with the Arab states and move on to a stage in which it will take action to reshape the international system.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 28, 2024]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.
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