Attacks on Jews justify their siege mentality

Pope Francis’s visit to Yad Vashem, and his moving gesture in kissing the hands of elderly Holocaust survivors, highlights the suffering of the Jewish people.

This has not diminished: three Jews were murdered in Saturday’s terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, and worshippers leaving the small synagogue in Creteil, near Paris, were assaulted. Given the rise in anti-Semitic attacks, is it any wonder that a siege mentality has entered the mass psyche of Israeli Jews?

Perhaps anti-Zionist campaigners should pause for thought when they criticise Israel’s security wall. Its Jewish citizens were paralysed by the fear of being murdered when they set foot on a bus to work or school, or even when they visited a cafe for an evening espresso. The wall has allowed them to function in safety, and most certainly would not have been built were it not for the Hamas-inspired suicide bombings, which killed 238 Jews in 2002. This prompted the initial phase of wall building, which had reduced the death-toll to just one by 2008.

Surely, when Pope Francis uttered the lament of ‘Never again, Lord. Never again’ in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance, on May 26, he was, at least in part, including the modern-day Israelis who were alive because of the security wall. If anti-Zionist campaigners find fault with this logic, it behoves them to offer an alternative strategy to secure the lives of children going to school, adults going to work, and people enjoying a cup of coffee.

Dr Kevin McCarthy

School of History

UCC

Seán Hales Terrace

Kinsale

Co Cork