Lára Nic An tSasanaigh

And being discriminated against for being Israeli is by no means fair
or ok but it’s not necessarily the same thing as anti-semitism.

It’s odd that a report on anti-semitism is being widely circulated by a group whose website is currently inactive and the exxs quoted range from the horrific - a child taunted classrooms being turned into gas chambers - to the questionable - a pub with a sign stating ‘zionists not welcome’.

My interest in this report was due to (1) how it is presented by Zionist outlets and (2) a personal interest as my husband is from a Jewish background. Anti-semitism and Holocaust-denial absolutely exist. There are horrendous examples provided in media reports but also assumptions and conflations.

'Deep concern' over number of anti-Semitic incidents The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland has expressed "deep concern" about the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded here over a six-month period up to January this year.

One of the many news stories on this report, for those interested www.rte.ie/news/2026/03...

3rd th3 report is being circulated to many media sources with an aim to create national policy to combat anti-semitism. While i have no issues with any policies to protect and enhance the experiences of minority groups in Ireland surely this should be tackled as a wider issue alongside Islamophobia?

1st the JRCI report seems to be based on incidents reported via an online mechanism they set up, the reports i’ve seen don’t indicate how, if at all, they are verified. 2nd of the exxs of anti-semitism noted in newspapers they appear to also include solely anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli incidents.

I was curious about the JRCI report claiming 143 incidents of anti-semisitism in Ireland over a 6 month period. Anti-semitism is a serious issue and should be called out but i’ve found it impossible to find the report. I have gleaned some slight issues of concern with the widely circulated claim.

Going ‘an Gaelige’ for Seachtain na Gaeilge. Unfortunately my Irish is poor, despite coming from a family who were Irish speakers only two gens ago. I’m trying to pick up more so it’s great to have an official ‘Irish week’ to inspire! (yes my surname means ‘English’ but no it doesn’t mean we were!).

Thou shalt not kill schoolchildren to distract from your crimes against children.

We have opinion but won’t actually stand by them, not exactly new opinions either!)

An no authors provided. all the eye rolls.

Yet another aggressive, illegal attack on another sovereign nation with attractive assets by the US (alongside Israel). Another example of biased media naturalizing and framing the ‘war’ as the fault of the attacked. Another facilitation exercise by the EU alongside the UK. Depressingly familiar.

Students could have deferred years, took a break, any number of options. The reality is it was a global pandemic, society was not ‘normal’, universities being open would have contributed to covid rates and in the midst of that ppl got degree and many grades they probably wouldn’t have otherwise!

It was a pandemic, a lot of people died and more would have died without lockdowns and reasonable closures. NI did not have a health service fit for purpose. These are all relevant facts, also relevant is the reality many students had a lot more attention and leniency than the previous norm.

We must reclaim and rejuvenate urban spaces WHEN my wife and I moved W back to Cork from the UK a few years ago, we agreed we'd only live in one of two places. We'd dig ourselves into the side of a rock somewhere in the Beara peninsula and settle in beside the sheep. Or we'd try to find some-where to live in Cork city centre. Where we absolutely would not live, we agreed, was where we had both grown up: The mind-numbing. spirit-crushing suburbs of the city's southside, and in particular the Suburbs are not the solution to our issues, writes Des Fitzgerald desolate borderlands of Ballinlough and Douglas, where dreams don't go to die, exactly, but do sometimes go to settle down quietly in a row of unchanging, semi-detached houses, each of them extended and rendered until any trace of interest or character has even care fully removed. The French anthro-pologist Marc Augé uses the term "non-places" to describe bland, tran-sient and interchange-able modern spaces, which seem to exist out-side of the usual human references to history, culture, and identity. That's probably a bit strong for, say, Bishop-stown. But still, there's something about the long roads and narrow footpaths of the south-side suburbs, the pre ponderance of shopping centres and petrol station forecourts, the near-total absence of commercial and civic excitement, that seems almost calibrated to prevent anything that

For the Cork crowd, the @irishexaminer.bsky.social has a big supplement on the future of the city today, and I have an article in it about how much I hate the southside in general, Douglas in particular. #speirgorm

And i can tell you from living in a country that could cope with mass infection, unis have a duty of care to their staff not just their students that was not always factored in. No one had an easy ride through the pandemic, not every negative experience comes with financial compensation.

Don’t be ridiculous, the society did not choose what to do, there were strategic decisions make about where greatest risk lay for the health service. NI closed down relatively late and it was clear that one of the key risks was the fact many students in NI return home to rural areas en mass.

For ppl who vote for Reform it’s ok if it’s the majority being radicalized, just not ok if there is any sense of collective identity amongst a ‘suspect community’ (which the Irish were also considered, back in the day).

The selective amnesia about a devastating event that happened so recently is interesting from an historical perspective but is absolutely wild pretending there was any ‘normal’ that unis were preventing students from having. The NI health service could not cope with mass breakouts, simple as that.

What i remember working at a uni during covid was having to pivot online with no notice to provide teaching, supervision and moral support while being separated from family and getting no support. I remember my Danish uni throwing us back into classrooms where we had wave after wave of infection.

Just saw a law firm in the North advertising a class action against NI unis for inhibiting the student experience during covid. It just made me incandescent how they framed it, as if there was normal life or that NI didn’t have huge outbreaks of covid due to students going home from
uni with it?!

I’m not trying to defend him or them but FBI files are based on intelligence, which is hearsay that is not proven or often provable. I’m absolutely sure he was a paedophile due to Chris Moore and others work - and believing victims - but in terms of legal proceedings, inc HAI, it is not proven.

Well, the allegations against him were not accepted as proven by the HIA inquiry but Chris Moore’s book on Kincora is pretty damning. I’d suggest he is probable rather than known.

There was an amazing bar / b&b going for buttons in Youghal not so long ago, i reckon we resituate the lab to Cork East!

In the intertwining of depraved privilege, it is shocking that the statue still in Dungannon was removed from India in 1958 before being bought and installed at Royal Dungannon in 1960. Unveiled by the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, a probable paedophile. www.geograph.ie/photo/7972058

Up in Lisburn wondering, as i often do, how a statue to the ‘imperial psychopath’ John Nicholson is still in the centre of Lisburn (and another at his former school Royal Dungannon). The fact that its existence is not even a subject of public debate reveals how far from postcolonial NI remains.

oh dear. it sounds like a 3 drink minimum!

Pile of garbage secreted behind an old wall, mainly vodka bottles.

Evidence of older iron railing behind the wall.

Additions to the now exposed midden (or fallen debris?)

There is an interesting little contemporary archaeology / garbology project site near where i live where a 19C wall has collapsed to reveal an active hidey spot for mainly cheap vodka. There is an old iron gate / fence now apparently and really interesting is that it is being added to!

One of my colleagues told me he’d have happily sat through wuthering heights as a perfume ad for 2 hours but this was much, much worse. I love the book too much to put myself through it, the casting looked terrible for the two leads and the pr machine has been a red flag.

Can you spare a minute to help this campaign? Erasing a Word Erases a People: Reinstate Palestine in the British Museum

A petition re the BM’s removal of ‘Palestine’ from some of its interpretation c.org/S5kmKbSBSd