Antisemitism is real and it’s out in the open here in Ireland

It’s not every day you wake up and realise you’ve become the spokesperson on antisemitism. But what if you wake up and you realise that someone doesn’t like or respect or tolerate you because of your religion or ethnicity? What happens if you wake up and you realise that you are unwelcome because of where you happened to be born? That you are expected to hide your culture, history, holidays, jokes, food, so no one will know “what you are”?

Well, then, that’s when you become a spokesperson on antisemitism.

And I say “one day”, but the reality is that it happens bit by bit, until there is nothing left. And the really scary thing is, most days you don’t even notice that you have given up another little bit of who you are. On the rare days that you do, you tell yourself it’s better to just keep your head down just so no one will look at you weirdly, or yell at you, or worse.

In the last year, and especially since deciding to run in the local election and becoming a public figure, I purposely chose not to share anything to do with any Jewish holiday on my social media, or any of my WhatsApp groups.

I couldn’t cope with the anxiety that comes from waiting for the hurtful comments, so I told myself that it doesn’t mean anything if just this one year I don’t post anything. There is nothing as effective as self-persuasion.

But then last Monday was Holocaust Memorial Day, and I attended the ceremony together with my husband, who was invited to light a candle in honour and memory of his family who died in Auschwitz. It was an extremely powerful moment for him personally because his grandmother, the sole survivor of her whole family, has never agreed to speak about her life during the war. It was also a powerful moment for us as a couple because of everything we have been put through these last few weeks; and it was a powerful moment for our whole community. And I realised that I was afraid to share it. I didn’t even take a photo. I just sat there, crying, throughout the ceremony.

It seems easy for some to pretend that antisemitism doesn’t exist. But the fact is that like any other racism, it can be expressed openly and directly, like the client who refused to pay our invoice because we are originally from Israel, or the guy driving by who rolled down his window when he recognised me from the press and yelled a racial slur, or the lady who ran after me when I left a campaign leaflet at her door to tell me what she thinks of “people like me”.

It can also be so much more nuanced. Sometimes it’s just a look that someone gives you, sometimes it’s the way they phrase their words, or how they look you in the eye and refuse to acknowledge you’re there. Like the person who kept sending me articles showcasing “good Jews”, or the person who told me to “not make waves”, or the colleague who saw me wearing a Star of David necklace and refused to speak to me throughout an entire meeting.

I bought that necklace in an act of defiance when I felt the walls of hate closing in on me. Like most other Jewish people I know in Ireland, I am now afraid to wear it in public.

“Nuanced racism”, which is the type I’ve mostly been subjected to, is so much harder to deal with. In many cases, even though everyone knows the meaning of what has been said, it is “open to interpretation”, or it is “just a misunderstanding” or “a joke”, or “all in your head”.

When I tried talking about it, people hid behind “I don’t accept this definition of antisemitism, therefore this is not antisemitic”; “you have no place saying what is antisemitic. I will decide if it is” or, as I was told the last time I tried to talk about it, “maybe it is not racism, maybe we just don’t like you?”.

But, really, does it matter? In the last few months Irish-Jewish people have been refused service, have been bullied in schools and universities, have feared being recognised as Jewish and have been verbally and physically attacked.

So, if someone looks at a person and only sees their place of birth, or their religion, or ethnicity, or any other characteristic, and if they make that person, on purpose, feel hurt, isolated, bullied or afraid for their safety, does it matter what name we give this behaviour except “unwanted”?

Orli Degani is an Independent local election candidate in Dún Laoghaire, south Co Dublin