An anti-Zionist demonstrator in Ireland wears a hat calling for Israel’s destruction. Photo: courtesy of David Collier.

The head of Ireland’s main pro-Israel organization has said that antisemitism in her home country is rife, asserting that “those who are dismissing claims of antisemitism within Ireland, especially in anti-Israel activism, are either blind and deaf to those who hate Jewish people, or are not interested in combatting it.”

Jackie Goodall — the founder and director of the Dublin-based Ireland Israel Alliance — made the claim in her introduction to an independent report into antisemitism in the Irish republic that was released on Thursday.

Goodall said she welcomed the report by David Collier, an independent researcher based in the UK, because “it exposes a dark underbelly of horrific levels of antisemitism that disguises itself as anti-Zionism, and which is evidenced within our political and academic spaces, on our streets and elsewhere.”

Collier’s report highlighted disturbing levels of antisemitism, as well as tolerance of the prejudice, among Irish politicians.

“Irish politicians share material that is clearly fake and that comes from social media accounts that are blatantly antisemitic,” he wrote, pointing out that one member of the Irish parliament had liked a social media post opining that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “may not have been too far wrong” in his hatred of Jews. Several other parliamentarians have aggressively pushed the anti-Israel BDS campaign, which advocates for Israel’s elimination as a sovereign state.

In her introduction, Goodall argued that there was “no doubt that Ireland’s small Jewish population of approximately 2,500 are worried, worried enough that some have already packed their bags and moved to Israel.”

She added that “one member of the community told me he had always considered Ireland a good and safe place to live but sensed the atmosphere had changed in recent years. ‘I can feel it. I hear the comments about baby killers and murderers.’ He ceased wearing his kippah in public when having stopped at a petrol station one day, someone asked him why he killed Jesus, and how he could live with that fact.”