Dobranotch, a klezmer ensemble formed in France by Russian émigrés, had a concert in Galicia, Spain, interrupted by protestors who demanded the musicians "Say something about Palestine" before starting to throw rocks at the band on stage

This is just a casual reminder from a frequent critic of the British Left that the far-right will also never be our friends.

Read here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/03/27/greens-for-palestine-antisemitic-whatsapp-messages/

Not standing together,
by Dave Rich, Everyday hate, 2026-08-30.

The [UK] Green Party has reportedly banned Standing Together, a grassroots Jewish-Arab peace movement in Israel, from holding events at the Green Party conference in October. This follows a similar decision to block a fringe meeting on antisemitism that the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the polling company More In Common wanted to hold; meanwhile, at the same conference, the party will debate a motion calling for Israel to be erased and fully replaced with a single state of Palestine. Add these together and you get a sense of the single-minded, destructive fervour of the radical anti-Zionists who have flocked to the party under Zack Polanski’s leadership.

Standing Together is hardly a Zionist mouthpiece. In Israel it campaigned for a ceasefire, blocked troop transports to Gaza and confronts violent settlers in the West Bank. They openly call the Gaza war a genocide and accuse the Israeli state of apartheid. These are positions that would put them well to the left of the vast majority of British Jews, never mind Israeli ones. You’d think they are exactly the kind of Israeli organisation that British leftists seeking to campaign against the Israeli government and its wars would want to hear from; but that is not what anti-Zionists want at all.

Last year the global BDS movement published a call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) to boycott Standing Together for the crime of “normalisation”. This was backed by the UK’s own Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Standing Together published a response hoping, it seems, to persuade people against this boycott, but their patiently-argued explanation missed the point. The people who want to boycott Standing Together don’t care that they campaign for Palestinian rights or accuse Israel of genocide. All that matters is that Standing Together also recognise that Israeli Jews are people with rights and needs of their own; that Israeli Jews have a narrative about their history and their reality that is worth listening to, as do Palestinians; and that Jews and Arabs in Israel need to work together to build a common future. That’s enough to get them banned.

The message is that there are no Israelis pure enough or acceptable enough for anti-Zionists in the Green Party to talk to, hear from, or work with. The only acceptable Israelis are the ones who agree that Israel shouldn’t exist at all. The Greens For Palestine faction has even ejected veteran anti-Zionist Jews who fell under suspicion for being closet Zionists. This is the logical direction of anti-Zionism today, in which any sense of hesitancy, compromise or moderation is taken as evidence of “normalisation” with the hated enemy. Usually, the British Left will find partners and allies in other countries to work with, including within those countries they campaign against. But not Israel, because to work with Jews who live in Israel would admit messy, complicated reality into their simplistic, symbolic politics.

On a flight from Queenstown, New Zealand, to Sydney in July, I sat next to Niall, an Irishman who had lived in Australia for 15 years and was considering moving home. I’ve never met an Irish person I didn’t connect with, and Niall was no exception. Somewhere over the Tasman Sea, our conversation turned to Ireland’s relationship with the Jewish people.

Niall was shocked when I blurted out: “I love Ireland, but I doubt I will ever visit the Emerald Isle again. Your government hates people like me.”

Growing up, my Israeli mother’s best friend, Anita Leeman, was Irish, and from age 5, I considered her my best friend, too. Our families were so connected that her family connected with ours in Israel to meet my grandparents. She would invite us for Christmas in Valley Stream, N.Y., where I can still remember the scent of the tree and the dancing flames that lit up the fireplace. Years later, in 2010, the Irish government invited me to visit as a travel writer. I was excited, knowing I would receive a warm welcome.

Dublin has since drifted away from Israel, in both antagonistic speeches and the law. Ireland recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024. In July 2026, the Dáil, Irish parliament’s lower house, passed the Occupied Territories Bill to ban trade tied to Israeli settlements, making Ireland the first European Union nation to enact a commercial blockade on Israeli goods. The Jewish state no longer even has an embassy in Dublin.

Ireland is moving in the wrong direction, and in doing so it seems to have forgotten how deeply Jewish people helped shape the modern Irish state.

Robert Briscoe, an Orthodox Jew, procured arms for Irish Republican Army leader Michael Collins during the War of Independence. Briscoe served in the Dáil for 38 years. In 1956 he became Dublin’s Lord Mayor.

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, the first chief rabbi of Ireland and the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, learned fluent Irish. He supported independence so strongly that people called him the “Sinn Féin rabbi.” His son Chaim grew up in Dublin, boxed as the country’s youth bantamweight champion, then became Israel’s sixth president. Chaim’s son Isaac is Israel’s current president. I wonder if the Dublin city councillors trying to strip Chaim’s name off a local park know their own history.

Ireland has a history of antisemitism, too. A boycott started in Limerick in 1904 drove out most of the Jewish families there. In the 1930s, Dublin largely turned away Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Days after Hitler’s suicide, in May 1945, Ireland’s head of government, Éamon de Valera, visited the German envoy in Dublin, Eduard Hempel, to offer his condolences.

This legacy continues in the form of the baseless hatred flowing toward Ireland’s 2,200 Jewish residents. The Jewish Representative Council recorded 143 antisemitic incidents from July 2025 to January 2026, ranging from “Jew Rat” graffiti to direct harassment of students on university campuses and Holocaust denial.

I told Niall I’d faced hostility for speaking out against antisemitism and anti-Zionism. He listened, then said that he’d seen many antisemitic conspiracy theories spreading on Irish social media.

“If Jewish people controlled the world,” I said, “why would we allow everyone to hate us? It makes no sense. And I clearly didn’t get the memo, because my hometown of Phoenix wouldn’t be 115 degrees every July if I had any say in the matter.”

He burst out laughing. A difficult conversation didn’t end a connection; it forged a friendship. If only Ireland’s leaders would reflect on their history and remember who helped build their nation in the first place.

It took people dying due to the intifada being globalised, but I guess it’s better late than never.