{"id":43860,"date":"2026-05-16T11:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/43860\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T11:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:29:21","slug":"boycott-is-a-pernicious-strategy-silencing-jews-israelis-and-palestinians-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/43860\/","title":{"rendered":"Boycott is a pernicious strategy silencing Jews, Israelis and Palestinians \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 7,318 Poles are named as Righteous Among the Nations, an award given to gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. There were 32 million Catholic Poles in Poland in 1939. The arithmetic may be crude but around one in 4,000 took the risk, albeit perilous, to save a Jewish life. Of the million Jewish children in Poland in 1939, 5,000 survived. My mother was one of them, saved in part by the heroism of Pola Binkowska, a young Catholic woman who loved her. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an age-old question. What would you have done? What are you prepared to do today?<\/p>\n

Anti-Semitism\u2019s most potent weapon is silence. When Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate said, \u201csilence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented\u201d he was referring to the bystander, a term that embraces the apathetic, the passive, the opportunist and those paralysed with fear. Bystanders represent the largest demographic; it is they who permit the destruction of democracy and all that follows. Pola, my mother\u2019s saviour, was not a bystander.<\/p>\n

This weekend, a number of countries, including Ireland, are boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> in protest at Israel<\/a>\u2019s participation. How has boycott become a pernicious strategy that silences not only Jews and Israelis but also Palestinians<\/a>? Ireland\u2019s one-note narrative about Israel refuses to allow room for historical complexity or realpolitik. Palestinian voices like Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who campaigns against Hamas<\/a>, are rarely heard. <\/p>\n

Instead, Ireland chooses to boycott. Universities sever links to Israeli academics and companies often at the expense of ending years-long collaborations on research, mid-project. Irish \u201capartheid free zones\u201d have sprung up, another arm of the BDS movement which itself calls for the destruction of Israel, capturing businesses and cultural institutions. <\/p>\n

The same mindset endorses Kneecap, one of whom was charged with displaying a flag of Hizbullah at a concert \u2013 a charge thrown out over a legal timing issue. Were Kneecap aware that Hizbullah\u2019s spiritual leader is Ayatollah Khomeini, who banned music in Iran in 1979? Hatred of Israel too often involves trampling over irony as well as critical thinking. Some artists are having to self-censor to avoid the risk of boycott; it can be costly having the \u201cwrong\u201d opinion.<\/p>\n

Screening of the Eurovision final has been replaced with the Eurovision episode of Father Ted on publicly funded RT\u00c9, a political decision which has been taken on behalf of the country. It is a petulant and spiteful act that is directing public opinion, the antithesis of RT\u00c9\u2019s remit. <\/p>\n

Pantibar and the George, two gay bars in Dublin are also boycotting the event<\/a>. Yet where are the similar public statements of condemnation of the treatment of gay people by Hamas or its funders, Iran? The Jewish community here may not be the intended target of this boycott but the obsessive focus on Israel is nonetheless silencing Jews and Jewish culture everywhere.<\/p>\n

Seeing Auschwitz, a remarkable exhibition of photographs taken by the perpetrators, is currently on view in Turin. I had agreement from a national institution to show the exhibition in Dublin but it was withdrawn after October 7th 2023. Apparently, management feared for the safety of its personnel. The mob was allowed to dictate the curatorial programme of a public institution, an exhibition that would have made a profound contribution to Holocaust education. The independence of cultural institutions is a bellwether for the current health of democracy. Self-censorship silenced the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Israel through to Eurovision final after shouts of \u2018stop the genocide\u2019 during songOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The website of UN Women states: \u201cWartime sexual violence is one of history\u2019s greatest silences and one of today\u2019s most extreme atrocities.\u201d Yet it took UN Women 18 days to acknowledge what it referred to as \u201cdisturbing reports of gender-based and sexual violence\u201d. But it was not until March the following year that the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict found \u201creasonable grounds to believe\u201d conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the October 7th attacks, a fact still not widely acknowledged. <\/p>\n

And then, here in Ireland, there was a chilling silence in the season finale of The Late Late Show earlier this month. Patrick Kielty asked his guest, Boy George, about the recent stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green in north London, which Kielty rightly described as \u201chorrific\u201d. Kielty mentioned the abuse Boy George has received over many months for his support of the Jewish community, suggesting that \u201cthe backdrop\u201d to the London attacks are \u201cthe horrors in Gaza, and this is a complex thing\u201d. <\/p>\n

Boy George replied that \u201cyou don\u2019t blame a whole nation for what\u2019s going on in America or in Russia or anywhere else\u201d. He said he has many \u201cbeautiful\u201d Jewish friends and is only interested in people, not identities. He reminded Kielty that his first band was literally called Culture Club which comprised Irish, Jewish and Rastafarian members. <\/p>\n

The audience was silent; there was no applause. Boy George said: \u201cIf you don\u2019t know any Jewish people, maybe that\u2019s the problem.\u201d Turning to the audience he asked: \u201cDo you know any Jewish people?\u201d Silence. Boy George said: \u201cLook at the quiet, so weird.\u201d In that moment, Kielty missed an opportunity to make an emphatic statement in support of Jewish people. <\/p>\n

Kielty next addressed Boy George\u2019s participation in Eurovision \u2013 where he represented San Marino but failed to make the final \u2013 perhaps expecting his guest to justify his decision. Boy George was having none of it. He has always believed in music as a unifying force. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s entirely correct: cultural boycott only inflames divisions and targets individuals based on their identity alone. <\/p>\n

\"PatrickPatrick Kielty pictured ahead of The Late Late Eurosong special. Photograph: Andres Poveda <\/p>\n

What does The Late Late Show audience\u2019s silence tell us?<\/p>\n

In Ireland there are 2,500 Jews; most Irish people have not met a Jewish person. It is also true that live television often creates a reticence in individuals to emote publicly. But the demonisation of Israel and Jews across society has also contributed to a form of groupthink that prevented any individual from speaking out. This was not a fringe group of cultists gathered in obscurity; this was the largest and longest-running live television show in Ireland. And in that context, the silence spoke volumes. <\/p>\n

Kielty, who has been rightly lauded for his bravery in confronting his father\u2019s brutal, sectarian murder in Northern Ireland, has used this tragedy to build bridges with the assassins\u2019 community. He is someone I have long admired given my own work with the descendants of Nazi perpetrators. Kielty has also lived in London, where you may find yourself among 30 different ethnicities just sitting on a bus. London is where the Jews of Golders Green have lived for 120 years, mostly unmolested \u2013 the largest concentration of Jewish life in the UK.<\/p>\n

The Late Late Show audience\u2019s real-time reaction struck me as the classic behaviour of the bystander. It mirrored the silence of all those anti-racist organisations and advocates who decry attacks on other minorities, who boycott Israel, yet won\u2019t speak out for the Jews of Golders Green.<\/p>\n

Oliver Sears is founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 7,318 Poles are named as Righteous Among the Nations, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20858],"tags":[21217,20859,20860,27969,303,145,27968,27970,27971,23758],"class_list":{"0":"post-43860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eurovision","8":"tag-boy-george","9":"tag-eurovision","10":"tag-eurovision-song-contest-2026","11":"tag-hizbullah","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-kneecap","15":"tag-late-late-show","16":"tag-patrick-kielty","17":"tag-rte"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}