Trinity College, with its humanist heritage, flits like a zephyr through the work of many an eminent Irish novelist. James Joyce and Sally Rooney have that in common.
A century separates Ulysses and Normal People, but more than the chasm of time is the matter of Israel and the Jews. It is as great as the parting of the Red Sea.
Rooney’s angst-ridden Trinity student joins protests against Israel over the Gaza Strip. James Joyce’s brilliant barrister JJ O’Molloy (in the Aeolus chapter) recites from memory the famous speech of John F Taylor to the Trinity Historical Society celebrating the Jews’ escape from bondage.
This speech comprises one of only two recordings of his work that Joyce made in his lifetime; for him it was definitive. That and the creation of the greatest Jew in modernist literature, Leopold Bloom, are probably what led to Frank O’Connor declaring, shortly before his death, that Joyce was “the greatest Jew of all”.
O’Connor’s verdict was no merely literary conceit.
Collier is clear that criticism of Israel alone does not constitute anti-Semitism, though he does point out that the Palestinian flag is wrapped around much 'hardcore anti-Semitism'
The year was 1966 and in Limerick the legendary socialist TD Jim Kemmy was locked in mortal combat with another Labour TD who publicly supported the Limerick pogrom in 1904 (the year in which Joyce set Bloomsday). Kemmy left the Labour Party.
Half a century later, anti-Semitism still smoulders in Ireland, according to a report published last week by investigative journalist David Collier.
Through a dossier of open-source material, Collier shows that anti-Semitism is woven into the warp and weft of our society; in anti-Israeli propaganda by politicians, academics and activists.
He reproduces speeches from TDs disseminating fake news; images from university walls during Boycott Israel campaigns, declaring: “There were no gas chambers.” He names names.
Toxic clips
He punctuates the report with toxic clips from Twitter. As terrifying as those demanding “Death to all Zionists” (sometimes all Jews) is the casual anti-Semitism which stalks the streets and tweets of Ireland. He is clear that criticism of Israel alone does not constitute anti-Semitism, though he does point out that the Palestinian flag is wrapped around much “hardcore anti-Semitism”.
Collier clearly hoped to spark a debate in Ireland like that which convulsed the British Labour Party. It was a bloodbath and cost Keir Starmer internal support, but he confronted their demons. And the adoption by the British government in 2018 of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism copperfastens it. (Ireland has co-signed with Europe, but not in our sovereign capacity.)
The IHRA definition specifies that criticism of Israeli government actions and policies is not anti-Semitism, but denying Israel’s right to exist and applying a double standard to the actions of Israel is.
An explosion of drama series such as Ridley Road and Paris Police 1900 shows that global cultural concern about anti-Semitism is in the zeitgeist.
Many on social media question her decision to allow translations into Chinese (human rights violations against the Uyghurs are incontrovertible), into Russian and so on
Anti-Semitism is not new in Ireland: the Limerick pogrom long pre-dates the creation of the state of Israel. We may bury this history as deeply as some of those republican “martyrs” who practised it. But as long as republicans celebrate Seán South, an enthusiastic member of the fanatically anti-Semitic Maria Duce organisation, in song and story, that history lives.
During the second World War, Jewish refugees and a small kindertransport of Jewish children were given refuge here, despite our generally non-commital attitude to Germany.
The rationale – embarrassing the British on Jewish immigration and self-determination in Palestine – seems to perfectly illustrate those lines of TS Eliot: “The last temptation is the greatest treason/ To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
But Eliot himself was guilty of a sordid anti-Semitism – Yeats briefly too. The true horror is that for a while among writers, anti-Semitism was actually fashionable.
Loud and clear
The fundamental requirement of a writer is to have a voice. Sally Rooney’s is loud and clear: that of disaffected, middle-class youth, especially students.
The voice of alienated middle-class youth is as legitimate as any other voice in literature. Rooney sold everywhere. She is as much rabbi for alienated middle-class youth in Tel Aviv as she is in Terenure.
Rooney, like any other writer, is not responsible for how her work is received (for god’s sake, I’ve read articles saying she is the embodiment of Gramsci’s theory of counter-hegemony). But it is when she takes an action such as refusing the Hebrew translation of her book Beautiful World, Where Are You that the moral responsibility of being the voice of a generation kicks in.
Many on social media question her decision to allow translations into Chinese (human rights violations against the Uyghurs are incontrovertible), into Russian and so on.
Rooney says she would be honoured to have Beautiful World translated into Hebrew, just not by an Israeli publisher – cultural boycott by another name. Ten years ago, in a definitive article addressing another boycott, Fintan O’Toole wrote: “If there’s one thing western intellectuals can’t afford to be crude about, it’s the relationship of their own cultures to Jewish history.”
Sadly, Collier’s report did not catalyse that debate. But as student unions in Ireland and Britain this week lobby the Irish Government and universities to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, perhaps Sally Rooney did.