LAST UPDATE | 7 hrs ago

As someone who identifies herself as Jewish, half-Israeli and Irish, Ria Czerniak-LeBov has long felt that non-Zionists among the Irish Jewish community have not been represented publicly to any significant degree — not only since 7 October but throughout her whole life.

Here, she explores the various aspects of Irish-Jewish-Israeli identity in a time of war, warning about the dangers of conflating Judaism and Zionism. She says that while she is extremely proud of her Jewish heritage, as an academic, she has informed herself of the complexities and history of the issues in the region. 

She is now critical of Israel and the role of the Netanyahu government as a conduit for Zionism and its brutal war on Gaza’s civilians in the past 19 months. As an Irish Jewish Israeli woman, Ria finds that there is such a pervasive fear of being perceived as anti-Semitic that organisations censor, dilute or avoid any anti-Israel commentary, even by Jewish artists and writers…

LAST MONTH, 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a public letter in which they criticised Israel’s continued bombardment of Gaza, highlighting the Israeli government’s increasingly extreme policies and the threat they pose to its democracy. Later that week, the Board suspended the vice-chairwoman of its international division, Harriett Goldenberg, one of the letter’s signatories.

I would love to say I was shocked, but this appears to be par for the course these days. I can no longer count the number of Jews who have been ostracised, cancelled or reprimanded for criticising the Israeli government. Instead, I stared at my phone and felt numb, a numbness that has settled in my bones after 19 months of horror.

I will never forget the thoughts that rushed through my mind after 7th October 2023. I cried as I read report after report, watched video after video, until I didn’t have any more tears to cry. Even then, as I checked in with my relatives in Israel, I felt a familiar knot form in the pit of my stomach, knowing that the fate of Palestinians was sealed.

From the moment in........

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