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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   797 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 24, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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About a year ago, in a discussion of Ireland's rabid support for the Palestinian cause, I argued that it's primarily caused by misguided post-colonial solidarity and that "I've never gotten the feeling that Ireland is an antisemitic country".

That's a position I'm now revisiting:

A Jewish man was hit by a stranger shouting antisemitic insults on a Dublin city bus on Friday [the 18th of July], according to a video circulating on social media. The assailant shouted “genocidal Jews” and other slurs at the man.

He also said he recognized that the man was a Jew “because of his face.” The Jewish man – who recorded the incident – can be heard saying, “I get used to it; they are all like this.”...

The assailant then slapped the Jewish man in the face and tried to take his phone.

Comments on social media said the driver called the police and that the man was arrested.

An officer told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it does not comment on material circulated online by third parties but confirmed that “shortly after 11 p.m. on Friday, 18 July 2025, [police officers] from Rathmines responded to reports of a disturbance on a bus in Rathgar, Dublin.”

For reference, Rathgar is a very posh suburb, with houses going for €1 million at the minimum.

A few weeks ago, my dad quoted some Israeli politician (whose name escapes me) at me who supposedly claimed that his proudest achievement was drawing an equivocation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the public consciousness. I accept that the two are not strictly equivalent, but I don't think anyone can dispute anymore (in Ireland or anywhere else) that the former can often serve as a cover for the latter. I am quite confident that the assailant made no effort to ascertain his victim's political affiliation (i.e. whether or not he was one of the "good Jews") before harassing and assaulting him.

As an aside, I can't help but marvel at how self-defeating this behaviour is. Whenever you assault someone because they look like they might be Jewish, you are precisely demonstrating Israel's entire raison d'être, the moral necessity of its existence.

I am quite confident that the assailant made no effort to ascertain his victim's political affiliation (i.e. whether or not he was one of the "good Jews") before harassing and assaulting him.

Sadly, no one ever does. Woke activists in the 2010s had absolutely no interest in finding out your exact views on race and sex before calling for your firing as a white man. As with Chinese Cardiologists, humans free-associate and they do it with a broad brush.

Broadly it seems that there is a cycle of persecution:

  • Jews feel under threat.
  • They take unusually stringent overt and covert actions to defend themselves.
  • This makes them increasingly unpopular.
  • Rinse and repeat.

Does the existence of Jew-punchers on the bus suggest that they need their own state and should do whatever it takes to keep it? Yes.

Does the existence and behaviour of Israel/Mossad etc. push more people further towards such behaviour? Also yes.

Does the existence and behaviour of Israel/Mossad etc. push more people further towards such behaviour? Also yes.

How exactly does one Irish Jew minding his own business on a Dublin bus bear any responsibility for the actions of Netanyahu and Mossad? The implication that all Jews are collectively responsible for the actions of any individual Jew is about as close to a textbook definition of "racism" as I can envision.

I’m not making a legal case. I’m observing how, in practice, events and associations change public perceptions. And of course those perceptions change most sharply in the violent and unstable.

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