JBD1234

Longish post, but please bear with it. As I reported on X yesterday, the head of the Jewish Representative of Ireland, Maurice Cohen, told a gathering in the Department of Foreign Affairs last night that the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin had refused to allow a booking to go ahead of 70 rooms intended for delegates attending an international conference on combatting anti-Semitism. (The irony). Here are extended extracts from his speech: "When the World Jewish Congress began organising this SECCA Conference in Dublin, an event manager was appointed and one of her first jobs was to find accommodation. More than seventy people needed rooms, all of you here this evening, at a particularly busy time in Dublin, with Ireland holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. A shortlist was drawn up and we chose the Herbert Park Hotel in Ballsbridge. There was the usual discussion about rates and arrangements and then came confirmation that the rooms were reserved... The [hotel representative] asked me what SECCA was. I explained that it brought together Jewish community leaders from around the world and government appointed officials responsible for combating antisemitism. Most of those government officials were not Jewish. I told her that the conference was associated with Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, that government ministers would participate, and that some of those attending would be meeting the Taoiseach as well as other ministers. As I spoke, I noticed her manner change. There was a tension that had not been there before. Then she asked me a question I simply was not prepared for. 'Will the IDF be involved?' I remember looking at her and wondering whether I had heard correctly. The IDF? We were talking about a conference in Dublin on antisemitism, attended by Jewish community representatives, diplomats, civil servants and government officials. Nothing I had said had anything whatsoever to do with the Israeli army, yet somehow that was where the conversation had gone. Then came something even more disturbing. She told us that she would now have to consult the owners of the hotel, the Herbert Park Hotel, to determine whether we / you, would be permitted to stay there. More than seventy rooms which had already been booked and confirmed. A day or so later the answer came back. You / We could not. I thought afterwards about the extraordinary contrast. This was the hotel where I had celebrated New Year’s Eve, where I had raised glasses of champagne with friends, where I had celebrated my mother’s birthdays all the way to her 93rd year. For me it had always represented warmth and welcome. And now a group of people travelling to Dublin for a conference on antisemitism had been told that they could not stay there. [The hotel representative] told us that she would now have to consult the owners of the hotel, the Herbert Park Hotel, to determine whether we / you, would be permitted to stay there. More than seventy rooms which had already been booked and confirmed. A day or so later the answer came back. You / We could not. I thought afterwards about the extraordinary contrast. This was the hotel where I had celebrated New Year’s Eve, where I had raised glasses of champagne with friends, where I had celebrated my mother’s birthdays all the way to her 93rd year. For me it had always represented warmth and welcome. And now a group of people travelling to Dublin for a conference on antisemitism had been told that they could not stay there. There is an uncomfortable irony in organising an international conference to discuss antisemitism and finding that, before the conference has even begun, you have already encountered something that forces you to ask exactly the questions the conference was created to address. How quickly does the word 'Jewish' change a conversation? How easily does a gathering about antisemitism become associated with the Israeli army? And how quickly can people who were welcome when they were simply seventy hotel guests become something rather different once they are known to be attending a Jewish conference? That is why I tell this story tonight. Because contemporary antisemitism does not always arrive wearing the language of the past. It does not always announce itself with a slur, a threat or a placard. Increasingly, it can present itself as a question, a precaution, a policy, a request for clarification. It begins by treating Jewish identity as evidence of political allegiance. It turns Jewish people into representatives of a foreign state, Jewish gatherings into security concerns, and ordinary acts of welcome into decisions requiring special permission. That is the danger of antisemitism today: not only that it excludes Jews, but that it makes their exclusion appear reasonable. The question about the IDF was not an innocent misunderstanding. It revealed how quickly Jewish identity can be collapsed into Israel, how quickly Israel can be collapsed into suspicion, and how quickly suspicion can become discrimination. Seventy rooms had been booked. Seventy people had been welcomed as guests. The only thing that changed was what they were understood to be. That is not a minor administrative inconvenience. It is a warning. Antisemitism survives by changing its vocabulary while preserving its logic: Jews are treated as different, suspect and collectively responsible. The words may be new, but the message is old. You may enter as an individual, but once you are recognised as Jewish, the terms of welcome can change. And that is why we still have a long way to go in Ireland, the land of 100,000 thousand welcomes: because the test of a society is not whether it welcomes people before it knows who they are. The test is whether it continues to welcome them after it does. Yes, a long way to go in Ireland and The Herbert Park Hotel." @Alan__Shatter @RachelMoiselle @abrahamson_ed