David Vance SubstackRead More
Boy George and Patrick Kielty’s exchange on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show has sparked a row over antisemitism and attitudes to Jews in Irish public life. However it does not come as a surprise to some of us. You see Ireland is marinated in anti-semitism.
During the show, Boy George spoke about the antisemitic abuse he has witnessed and his long‑standing connection with Jewish friends and communities. When Kielty raised recent attacks on Jewish targets in Golders Green, Boy George pushed back, stressing that Jews were being singled out and that this needed to be named explicitly rather than diluted into generic talk about racism. Quite right!
Social media clips that went viral show Boy George looking visibly taken aback as Kielty downplays the specificity of antisemitic violence and tried to steer the conversation towards the suffering of Palestinians.
It struck me that Kielty showed a singular lack of empathy when speaking about Jews and that he appeared distinctly uncomfortable acknowledging that Jews are being targeted as Jews. When Boy George asked the audience if any of them knew a Jewish person, he was met with stony silence,
RTE, the Irish state broadcaster now faces criticism with some Jews and their allies arguing it reflects a wider problem: that antisemitism is minimised or treated as politically awkward whenever the Israel–Gaza war is mentioned.
But Ireland is seething in hatred for Israel and this can be traced back to a notorious event in WW2.
On 2 May 1945, after news broke of Hitler’s suicide in Berlin, Eamon de Valera, then Prime Minister, personally visited the German minister in Dublin to express Ireland’s condolences. Internationally, the move caused outrage. Ireland became the only democracy known to have officially marked Hitler’s death in this way. Not much has changed.
More recently, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin as a protest against what it described as Ireland’s “extreme anti‑Israel policies,” especially recognition of a Palestinian state and support for South Africa’s Gaza genocide case at the ICJ
Next week sees the Eurovision Song Contest. Ireland is boycotting it because Israel is taking part. RTE will not broadcast it to the Irish nation as part of the protest.
Ireland loathes Israel and so the Patrick Kielty Boy George exchange was entirely predictable. Do they really want to hurt Jewish feelings? Yes.
