We must not tolerate our national treasure being held to ransom

It is by one of those strange circuitous routes that the Book of Kells is in Trinity College at all. During penal times, when the Catholic Church was suppressed, the book came into the possession of the Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath, Henry Jones. In 1661 he decided to give the book, along with the Book of Durrow, to Trinity College. These have been Trinity’s most treasured possessions ever since.

The tale of how the Book of Kells ended up at Trinity is ironic in view of the campaign by student radicals at the college, allied to like-minded academics, to sever links, including financial ones, between Israel and the university. Like many universities, Trinity has funds which are invested in companies all over the world. The students accuse the Israelis of being “settler-colonialists”, but Trinity is the quintessentially “settler-colonist” institution, founded by the English explicitly to put their stamp on Ireland.

The successful rebellion against Trinity’s ties with Israel had the

Book of Kells at its heart. It nets the university an incredible €17m a year in tourist revenue. The student radicals blockaded the library containing the book, thereby depriving the university of a very valuable source of income.

They had done this before, over issues such as student fees and accommodation. The college authorities struck back, fining the students’ union over €200,000. The students responded by blockading the library again and setting up a camp nearby. The college then barred any member of the public from entering its grounds.

When the college authorities saw that the students were not for turning, and had, indeed, upped the ante, they quickly began to crumble. Initially they told the students that the college would end investments in Israeli companies with ties to illegal settlements on the West Bank. But this was not enough for the students, who kept up the blockade.

Then on Wednesday, the college totally surrendered. It will now aim to divest from all Israeli companies. A taskforce is to be established that will investigate other links with Israel including, incredibly, student exchange programmes.

Many people have a rather romantic view of student rebels, which is often misplaced. The leader of the successful rebellion, who is also the head of the college’s students’ union, is Laszlo Molnarfi. He began studying at the university in 2020, and joined a socialist group there called Students4Change. They have much more in their sights than simply Israel.

The group says its aim is to “dismantle the corporate university, as well as the racist, imperialist, white supremacist, patriarchal and cisheteronormative systems it reflects and reproduces”.

Students4Change describes Trinity itself as “an imperialist institution, complicit in war crimes and racist border control”. It accuses the college of investing “millions of euro in the war industry”.

Molnarfi is also part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. This movement wants the world to treat Israel in the same way as apartheid South Africa in the past. It must be turned into a pariah and totally internationally isolated. The movement long predates the current war.

One of the aims of the BDS movement is the return of all Palestinian refugees to Israel. When Israel was created in 1948, several hundred thousand Palestinians were either expelled or fled in the war launched by several Arab nations to destroy the new state. The descendants of those who fled or were expelled now number in the millions and are considered refugees to this day by the UN. If they were to return to Israel, Jews would become a minority in the Jewish state. There would, in effect, be no more Israel and no two-state solution.

So, we cannot pretend the BDS movement is moderate in character. It is far from it. If you support the existence of a Jewish state in the world, then you cannot support the BDS movement no matter how much you might abhor the present war. I think a Jewish state is an absolute historical necessity given that the Jewish people are the most consistently persecuted minority in the history of the world. It is why I support the existence of a Jewish state and a Palestinian one.

When Hamas massacred Israelis on October 7 last year, Micheál Martin condemned the attack. Molnarfi retweeted Martin’s post, but he did not join in the condemnation. Instead, he remarked: “Palestinians have the right to resist the brutal conditions imposed on them by the apartheid regime of Israel.”

On the Tonight Show on Virgin Media on Wednesday, former justice minister Alan Shatter pressed Molnarfi on the October 7 atrocities. Once again, he declined to condemn it. Instead, he spoke of the several million Gazans who are “trapped in an open-air prison”, and said this “breeds resentment, and rightly so”.

He also said: “We must never condemn the Palestinian resistance.”

So this is what Trinity, our most prestigious university, has allied itself with. The protesters are not moderates making reasonable demands. On the contrary.

And why should they stop here? They have seen how weak the college authorities are and might make yet more demands. Under Molnarfi’s ultra-radical leadership, the students’ union believes the college is implicated in a deeply wicked capitalist system. So why should they want to stop at demanding it divest from Israeli companies? What about US companies involved in the American arms industry?

If the students decide to blockade the Book of Kells once again, how will Trinity respond? Is the college so weak it will crumble each time? If so, then we must question whether the book should remain at the university at all. Maybe it should be given to the National Museum instead? Or perhaps it should be returned to the Catholic Church.

What other country would tolerate its greatest national treasure being held to ransom like this? Would France, Britain or the US? I doubt it.