Jon Ihle

I think there are people who are far better placed than I am to talk about what's going on in Gaza and what's going on in Israel.

I haven't been over there in 15 years, right?

So I'm definitely not somebody you should come to for an expert opinion on the rights and wrongs of that.

I do have my own opinions, but they don't really have a bearing on whether I deserve to feel like I'm under threat in the country where I live.

But I accept that there is a shadow hanging over what I am saying, which is that the Palestinian people are not living in any sort of security right now.

That's something I fully acknowledge.

And I also think that the Irish instinct to side with the underdog is a good moral instinct.

I don't mean to criticize that at all.

What I would invite people to do, though, is to try to disentangle that instinct and

the belief that the underdog deserves support from a sort of, let's say, unhealthy focus on who they think the perpetrators are and how wide that locus of blame should be.

Because I don't think it helps Palestinians.

I don't think it helps Irish people.

It certainly doesn't help Irish Jews to conflate lots of different kinds of people and sort of put them all into this one bucket where it's like, well,

you know, you have a connection to that country, therefore, you know, you should suffer too.

Yes, there's that, but also take cognizance of how, let's say, your activism against Israel is resonating in the country where you live in, and how it affects other Irish people too, right?

So that's important to point out.

Like, I'm Jewish, but I'm also Irish, right?

So I'm part of this community.

And how people choose to protest...

against Israel and the choices they make around that do have an effect on Jewish people here, right?