Mick Hartley

This, from last week's Sunday Times, will do little to change the widely-held view that Ireland is the most antisemitic country in Europe:

Israeli people living in Ireland have said their lives here have become “unbearable” in the past year with many afraid to leave their homes and some emigrating to other countries.

According to the 2016 census, 664 Israelis and about 2,500 Jewish people live in Ireland. However, the community claims that Ireland’s pro-Palestine stance has led to an increase in antisemitism that has left many families and their children feeling unsafe.

Bar Clara Mendez McConnon, 33, is originally from the upper Galilee region, which borders Lebanon, but has lived in Dublin on and off since 2012. McConnon is currently in Tel Aviv with her Irish husband and their two young children due to the discrimination they have received.

She said: “For me personally it’s just been heartbreaking. I’ve always been very proud to live in Ireland and was actually deep into my naturalisation process of becoming Irish, but the level of mistrust and isolation got to a point that was just unbearable.

“My eldest son who is seven got bullied at his GAA club a few times by his team-mates and the coach for being Israeli.

“We’ve completely avoided the city centre since October 7 because of the violent graffiti and posters of Hamas terrorists — my son is old enough that he’s able to read them. First he was scared and then he started being ashamed of who he is.

“We had families and friends of years that turned on us. I explained that I can only share the Israeli perspective because that’s my life. My family is being evacuated from the north and one of my childhood friends is one of the hostages that is still there [in Gaza].”

McConnon, who is on maternity leave after giving birth to her youngest son, said she experienced discrimination while in a maternity hospital in Dublin.

“The stress and anxiety ended up with me having a very high risk pregnancy with a lot of complications and I was told I needed a C section within 48 hours to bring the baby out a month early,” she said.

“One of the doctors that came in for the consultation decided to completely and utterly smash into me with her political views. This was my doctor and I was in a high-stress environment. I demanded that she be removed from the team and I received an apology letter from the hospital.”…

Orli Degani, 45, moved to Dublin with her husband and two children in 2018 from Haifa in northern Israel. She said many Israelis in Ireland were afraid to leave their homes.

“Some people have left Ireland to go back to Israel but most who have left went to other countries in Europe with different views,” she said.

“A lot of Jewish people have removed any symbol that might identify them as Jewish or Israeli, they just don’t want to be identified. A lot of people, including myself, at some point in the last year rarely left the house or they didn’t leave the house by themselves.”

Degani, who ran as an independent candidate in the local elections in June in Dun Laoghaire, said she regularly received antisemitic messages and comments online. She was dropped from the ballot by the Social Democrats in April, who felt her stance on the war in Gaza was no longer compatible with the party’s.

“My business suffered because of it somewhat. I deleted all the messages, but a lot of them were about claiming I was a genocide supporter,” she said.