Recently, my adult children came to visit me from Canada. As has become our tradition once or twice a year, we make a pilgrimage, as we are all insatiable readers, to The Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. Upon leaving at each visit, my children and I each depart with 4-5 books we’ve found among their shelves.

This time, upon perusing the highlighted and platformed books at the front of the store, I saw Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Jewish identity and indigeneity-denying screed The Message; Raja Shehadeh’s What Does Israel Fear From Palestine; Gideon Levy’s The Killing of Gaza; How Israel Stole Palestinian Property by Adam Raz; and On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe. When I looked for books conveying the Israeli/Zionist experience or point of view, I hunted through the stacks to find a single copy of Amir Tibon’s new book The Gates of Gaza next to Noa Tishby’s Israel, pushed back on the shelf behind A Day in the Life of Abed Salama - as you can imagine not about a Jewish experience.

I was deeply troubled by this. I have written to the owners, asking if their one sided platforming of anti-Israel voices was a function of fear of vandalism or a lack of commitment to dialogue and debate. I wondered about the silence and absence of books in their store on the gruesome actions of Hamas on 10/7. I won’t be quick to return if I’m not satisfied with their answer. I’m not holding my breath to get one. The exclusion and boycott of Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist voices in the arts and literary circles is rarely discussed, but it is more and more evident.

While I was considering how deeply disappointed I was in The Strand, I was also learning more about the perfidious Irish leadership, and the skein of Jew hatred that has simmered below the surface there for many years. I was familiar with the ruthlessness and Jew hating tendencies of Eamon De Valera, Taoiseach, President, and perennial leader in Ireland from 1916 through 1973. De Valera sent condolences to Nazi Germany on hearing of Hitler’s suicide in 1945, to give a bit of color to his inclinations.

But I wasn’t well informed of how deeply ingrained in the Irish body politic Jew hatred had become until Israel withdrew its Embassy from Ireland, evoking yet more antisemitic and anti Israel bile from Ireland’s Taoiseach and President. The next day I read a damning article by British Jewish historian Simon Sebag Montefiore which highlighted a campaign of violence and intimidation of Jews in Limerick in 1904 that bore more than a passing resemblance to both a low energy pogrom and a high energy BDS campaign, as well as the role of another Irish republican legend, Arthur Griffith, in fomenting the hatred in 1904 and throughout the next decades. And who can forget the role played by Irish nationalists Sinn Fein and the IRA in training, arming, harboring and partnering with Palestinian terror groups like the PFLP and Black September in the 70’s and 80’s?

Ireland had the temerity to castigate Israel for closing its embassy, even though they have made it quite clear that they will continue with their ‘genocide’ blood libel and their political alliance with Israel’s foes.

Now it seems clear that Israel - and for that matter, the US, including its incoming Trade representatives - will be reciprocating Ireland’s hostility, and likely to much greater economic effect. Well, you reap what you sow.

The final straw this week is the emerging news from Damascus, where a new mass grave of 100,000 has been uncovered, and the full horrors of the Assad regime’s torture and extermination gulag is coming to light. The horrors are so unimaginable I can’t repeat them here. Suffice it to say that Assad killed over 500,000, including more than 150,000 taken from their families, imprisoned, tortured, raped, humiliated, executed, and then rendered into dust and bone fragments.

The silence of international institutions and governments on Assad, those who have been quick to condemn Israel’s leadership and issue arrest warrants for them - or signal they would honor those warrants - is as loathsome as it is disgusting. Assad could walk the streets of Ottawa or Brussels a free man, while PM Netanyahu and former DM Gallant would be arrested and jailed for overseeing the response to the butchery of October 7th.

And where were the Irish, the Spaniards, the South Africans, when the Syrian regime was literally dismembering its perceived opponents? Where were the ‘activists’ who roam streets and occupy buildings in cities across our country? They were invisible. They were silent. They were uninterested because there was no Jew or Zionist to blame.

The victims of Assad and Alawite Syria were damned. They were silenced. The hypocrites and haters near and far were silent about Syria. Their action against Jews, Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood and Jewish indigeneity, and their inaction against murder on an industrial scale that was well known to be happening, that damns them.

This all demonstrated to me that we have much yet to do. Our identity and our security are still threatened. This isn’t going away anytime soon. Our vigilance is demanded. And your support is needed. Help your Federation fight the scourge of antisemitism with a year end gift. Donate HERE.