Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl grew up believing Jews could and should assimilate into European society, but the Dreyfus affair in France convinced him that antisemitism made that impossible. In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat, arguing that only a Jewish homeland could resolve the Jewish question. Herzl saw the Jewish state as a place where Jews could seek refuge from persecution and enjoy both dignity and a national identity. In 1897, Herzl presided over the First Zionist Congress and then founded the World Zionist Organization. Today, he is remembered as the founding father of Zionism.
Herzl died in 1904, decades before his dream came to fruition, but Israel did fulfill the purpose about which he dreamed. When Arab states expelled their Jews en masse, Israel provided them refuge. The same was true at the fall of the Soviet Union as Jews poured into Israel from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other former Soviet Republics.
As antisemitism again sweeps Europe—especially Ireland, Spain, and Norway—Israel should consider staging another rescue perhaps.
Israel does not passively await the arrival of besieged Jews; early in its history, it showed a willingness and ability to rescue them. In 1949–50, the new state launched Operation Magic Carpet to rescue Jews from Yemen, bringing 49,000 Yemeni Jews to Israel. When Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered the Algiers Accords that betrayed Iraqi Kurdish allies, the Mossad helped rescue Kurdish Jews. In 1984–85, Israel launched Operation Moses. The Mossad, Central Intelligence Agency, and Sudanese Security Forces collaborated to evacuate 8,000 Ethiopian Jews who had faced increasing prejudice under the Derg, Ethiopia’s Communist regime. In 1991, as the Derg collapsed and rebel forces approached the Ethiopian capital, Israel undertook Operation Solomon, a dangerous but effective mission to airlift more than 14,000 remaining Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa. In 2021, an Arab country helped Israel evacuate many of the remaining 100 Yemeni Jews left behind decades earlier, many of whom subsequently settled in Cairo.
As antisemitism again sweeps Europe—especially Ireland, Spain, and Norway—Israel should consider staging another rescue perhaps. Just as Israel could not count on Yemen, Iraq, and Ethiopia in its 20th century rescues, it might seek U.S. assistance, as it did with Operation Moses.
That Ireland is the most dangerous country in Europe for Jews today should not surprise. During the Cold War, the Irish Republican Army trained with the gambit of anti-Israel terrorist groups. Ever since the presidency of Mary Robinson, Ireland has legitimized, if not tactically embraced, antisemitism. Over the past year, antisemitism has reached unprecedented heights and put the country’s 2,200 Jews at immediate risk.
According to the Jewish Representation Council of Ireland, there were 143 incidents just in the second half of 2025, ranging from verbal abuse and vandalism, to threats, exclusion, and assault. The Irish government does not care; it has no system for recording antisemitic incidents. Wearing a Jewish star has become an invitation for assault. Irish taxis and businesses refuse service to Jews or Israelis without consequence. Near Ardee, swastikas and a Jewish star labeled with “Rat” were painted on a road; a local newspaper reported it was the eleventh such incident. Ireland’s chief rabbi earlier reported “Kill Jews” and “Zionists out of Ireland” graffiti. Vandals have targeted both the Jewish Museum and the Belfast synagogue.
Antisemitism has become politically mainstream. Fine Gael councilor Punam Rane told Dublin City Council that “the entire U.S. economy is ruled by the Jews, by Israel.” Dublin councilor Philip Sutcliffe, a former Irish Olympian, posted a video with Hitler footage, calling for a “real final solution” against “satanic” Jews. He later gave a non-apology apology, saying he “probably shared something I shouldn’t have.” Sinn Féin parliamentarian Johnny Guirke said of Israelis: “They are the Nazis of the modern world, a disgusting Zionist regime of supremacist beings, who attack every stand against them as anti-Semitic… . Most of the world are just plain sick of this victimhood.” In the same debate, Fine Gael’s Colm Burke compared Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto.
After the Celtic Marine Bar hung a banner announcing a ban on “all Zionists,” business boomed. Other bars followed suit.
President Michael D. Higgins dismissed the Israeli ambassador’s warnings about antisemitism as a “PR exercise” and said “there is no evidence” that Jews were at risk. Catherine Connolly, his successor and Ireland’s current president, has called Hamas “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people.” She addressed neither its slaughter of other Palestinians nor the genocidal program Hamas outlined in its covenant and subsequent statements. Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Micheál Martin likewise denies Ireland has an antisemitism problem, even as the Irish football captain refused to shake hands with his Israeli counterpart, and the Irish team protested during Israel’s national anthem.
In May 2026, the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin reportedly canceled a block of 70 rooms reserved for a conference of Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA) without explanation after the hotel manager queried bizarrely whether the Israeli military would be involved.
Israeli planners should not convince themselves that Jews are somehow safer in Europe than anywhere else, or that European mobs are less violent than Arab or African ones.
Jews in Ireland face the same sort of discrimination, targeting, and persecution that they once suffered in Yemen in the late 1940s and in Ethiopia in the 1980s. Irish politicians openly demonize Jews, treat them as dual citizens and subject to collective guilt. Politicians encourage Nazi-style boycotts and exculpate those who target Jews for violence. While the Irish, with racist smugness, consider themselves as more enlightened than the Kingdom of Yemen and Ethiopia’s Derg, and believe themselves arbiters of morality, they have become morally blind. Irish inaction and growing indulgence in antisemitism make inevitable antisemitic bloodshed, as never do mobs egged on by their leaders choose restraint.
Israeli planners should not convince themselves that Jews are somehow safer in Europe than anywhere else, or that European mobs are less violent than Arab or African ones. At a minimum, contingency planners should determine if they know where Jews live in Ireland, and what aircraft or ships they would need to evacuate them. The Irish army, like Yemen’s and Ethiopia’s, likely would not cooperate, but it is powerless. Israel or the United States might create a staging ground to land Ospreys or helicopters to shuttle Irish Jews to a safer location offshore, perhaps the Isle of Man, before onward travel to Israel or the United States.
It never hurts to be prepared. Perhaps preparation itself would wake the Irish up to what they have truly become and the extent to which the outside world recognizes a problem they deny.
