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Ireland: Antisemitism Without Jews

A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
When Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Minister, recently announced the closure of Israel’s embassy in Ireland because of Ireland’s antisemitic actions and anti-Israel posture, it led to flurry of articles in the press.
The immediate cause of the closure was the decision by the government of Ireland to join South Africa in presenting the case accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide in Gaza. Largely missing from the discussion is that there are almost no Jews in Ireland.
Jews were never very numerous in Ireland, but today they are on the endangered list. The Jewish community in Ireland is declining, numbering only 800 in a population of 5.3 million. The number increases to about 2500 with the addition of Jewish expatriates and temporary residents, mainly Israelis, working in the technology sector.
James Wilson explains that the disappearance of Jews from communities outside Dublin grows further each year. For example, the last synagogue service in Cork was held in 2016. Most of the Belfast Jewish community left during the “troubles,” after the shooting of a member of the community and the kidnapping of another.
Wilson relates how the Chief Rabbi of Ireland once told a joke about three European Jews discussing emigration. One said he would go to America for comfort and security, the second to Israel because it was the land of his ancestors, and the third said he would go to Ireland. Why? Because the Devil would not think of looking for a Jew in Ireland!
The Rabbi’s joke is reminiscent of one told in James Joyce’s Ulysses. At an early point in the novel, Garrett Deasy (a minor character and headmaster of the school where Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego in the novel, teaches) jokes to Dedalus that Ireland is the only country that has not persecuted the Jews. Why? Because they never let them in.
Leopold Bloom, the novel’s protagonist, is a Jew, sort of. Bloom’s mother was a Catholic, and his father was a Hungarian-Jewish convert to Protestantism. Although baptized at birth, everyone who Bloom interacts with considers him a Jew. Indeed, he admits to being Jewish (and Irish) when challenged by antisemites at Barney Kiernan’s pub.
First published in 1920, Ulysses is a fictional account of one day, June 16, 1904, in the life of Leopold Bloom, as he wanders through Dublin on a journey that loosely follows that of Homer in The Iliad. Examples of antisemitism, including the slanders of ritual murder and global conspiracies, as well references to Zionist projects in Palestine, figure prominently.
Joyce wrote Ulysses when he was living in self-imposed exile in Trieste, then part of Austria-Hungary. Leopold Bloom was a creation based on two Jewish friends of that period, not from Joyces’s earlier Irish background. They were the likely sources of information about Judaism and Zionism.
The Limerick Pogrom (also called the Limerick Boycott), emblematic of the reason for the small number of Jews in Ireland, is not mentioned in Ulysses, although it took place in 1904, the same year as Bloom’s fictional ramble. This pogrom, preceded by antisemitic outbursts in the late 1800s, included violence and intimidation, and led to the exodus of most of the approximately 170 Jews of Limerick; some to other centers in Ireland, many to other countries.
As to the situation for Jews in Ireland today, the outgoing Israeli ambassador, Dana Erlich, noted that she heard concerns about safety from Jewish citizens and Israelis.
In fact, the relatively few Jews in Ireland are not safe. A few weeks ago, a Jewish–American student wearing a Star of David was beaten severely, according toThe Irish Times. The assault took place at a Dublin bar (Flannery’s, 1.5 miles from Barney Keirnan’s pub).
Quite a few Jews left Ireland after October 7, 2023, because of safety concerns, according to Newstalk. One woman, an Israeli, said she does not mention that she is from Israel and avoids speaking Hebrew on her phone in public.
A recent article on antisemitism by Harvard scholar Noah Feldman notes that antisemitism has never been about real Jews as much as the antisemite’s imagination of them. In Ulysses, for example, the antisemite Deasy comments to Dedalus that “the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction” — to which Dedalus replies “ A merchant is one who buys cheap and sells dear … jew or gentile…”
What better example of imagination and reality?
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip

Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
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Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, the New York Times reported on Saturday citing unnamed Iranian officials. It is understood the Ayatollah fears he could be assassinated in the coming days.
Khamenei reportedly mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications.
Khamenei has designated three senior religious figures as candidates to replace him as well as choosing successors in the military chain of command in the likely event that additional senior officials be eliminated.
Earlier on Saturday Israel confirmed the elimination of Saeed Izadi and Bhanam Shahriari.
Shahriari, head of Iran’s Quds Force Weapons Transfer Unit, responsible for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, was killed in an Israeli airstrike over 1,000 km from Israel in western Iran.
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