An Irish campaigner and activist against antisemitism and attacks on Israel has told a London audience that the “victim-blaming” which took place after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 was “sickening” and “justifying the unjustifiable”.
Rachel Moiselle, in conversation with Soviet anti-Zionism scholar Izabella Tabarovsky, was sharing her views of Irish antisemitism at a packed event, which was part of the London Conference for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. The three-day conference attracted 400 people in person and many more on-line, to hear specialists and academics outline some of the central problems facing Jews worldwide — and offer suggestions as to how to tackle them.
Tabarovsky noted that her family had experienced “the full measure of what the 20th century dealt to the Jews” from family members who had been murdered either by Stalinists or by Nazis, to those who could not get jobs or be promoted in their chosen careers. Even when she herself had applied to college she had had to think whether or not Jews would be accepted at all.
Rachel Moiselle
The lesson she drew, she said, was that “when cultural and political institutions in society take on the language of anti-Zionism, an antisemitic outcome is inevitable — and this is what we are seeing today.” Nevertheless, Tabarovsky said, the “silver lining” was that the situation “produces warriors. And Rachel is one of them.”
Rachel Moiselle is the daughter of a mixed marriage — her father is Jewish, but she was brought up Catholic. She had always been aware of her Jewish heritage, she said, but had not studied or dealt with antisemitism in depth until comparatively recently.
Now a Ph.D student at Trinity College Dublin, she took a break from study after her undergraduate degree to work in a not-for-profit organisation. “I came back to a college campus that was drastically changed in culture.” Previously, she said, she had not registered antisemitic remarks or attitudes to any serious extent. “When I came back in 2021 it was glaringly obvious that the college culture had changed, in many ways, but with respect to the discourse on Israel/Palestine specifically.”
The main difference, she said, “was that when I was an undergraduate the references were to what Israel did. When I came back the talk was of what Israel was — that the entity in its entirety had to be destroyed”. This narrative, Moiselle said, was not just among the students, but pursued by lecturers at Trinity to the point where “people felt they really can’t say anything pro-Israel on campus”.
Moiselle said she believed that those she called “cultural Catholics” had replaced their lack of faith with anti-Zionism. She noted that during and after Irish neutrality in the war, Ireland had only accepted between nine and 50 Jewish refugees; and added that what had become worse in Ireland, for her, was the level of denial. “It is very difficult to combat a problem that people refuse to accept exists.”
After 7 October, she said, she echoed activist Noa Tishby that her “Jewish DNA had woken up”. She remains a singular voice of opposition to Irish anti-Jewish racism and is optimistic that she can make a difference.
The conference, convened by Goldsmiths professor David Hirsh, opened with a session with Hirsh, King’s College academic Daniel Allington, and the executive director of JPR, Jonathan Boyd, discussing how to use relevant data to decide how best to tackle antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric.
Allington, who is not Jewish, said he had previously held “stereotypical non-Jewish left-wing attitudes” towards Israel until his research convinced him otherwise. He explored the “inexorable” links between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, while Boyd’s presentation discussed how there were different interpretations of what constituted antisemitism, particularly when applied to global definitions.
