Why must Jews prove they are not Israel?

An international conference devoted to combating antisemitism would seem an unlikely setting for an incident that illustrates the very prejudice its participants have gathered to confront. Yet that is what reportedly happened in Dublin this week.

On October 13, Maurice Cohen, President of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, addressed participants of the SECCA Conference at a reception hosted by Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs. He described an encounter with the management of the Herbert Park Hotel that began as a routine accommodation arrangement and ended with a disturbing question about Jewish identity.

According to Cohen, more than seventy rooms had been reserved and confirmed for conference participants, including Jewish community leaders, diplomats, and government officials responsible for combating antisemitism. Many of those officials were not Jewish.

During a subsequent meeting to inspect the hotel’s conference facilities, the General Manager asked Cohen about the event. He explained its purpose and the participation of senior government representatives.

Then she asked: “Will the IDF be involved?”

The Israel Defense Forces had no connection to the conference. Nothing Cohen had said suggested otherwise. Nevertheless, the conversation had somehow moved from combating antisemitism to the Israeli military.

Cohen reported that the manager subsequently informed him that the hotel’s owners would have to decide whether the delegates could stay. Shortly afterward, the organizers were told that the accommodation would not be available.

The hotel’s account of these events should also be heard. But the question described by Cohen is revealing in itself. Why would a conference of Jewish community representatives and government officials automatically evoke an association with the Israeli army?

This incident brought to mind a subject I have studied for many years: the historical accusation of Jewish dual loyalty.

In my research book, Suitcase, Railway Station, Israel: On the History of Antisemitism in the USSR, I examined how Soviet antisemitism developed after the Second World War, particularly through the political suspicion directed at Jews because of their communal identity, international connections, and presumed relationship with Israel.

One of the most striking examples was the fate of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

Established with Soviet government approval during the war, the Committee was encouraged to mobilize Jewish support abroad for the struggle against Nazi Germany. Its international contacts served Soviet interests, and its members contributed to the country’s wartime efforts.

After the war, however, those same international connections acquired a different meaning in the eyes of the Soviet leadership. Activities previously encouraged by the state were increasingly interpreted as evidence of foreign influence and questionable loyalty.

The Committee was eventually destroyed. Its chairman, the celebrated actor Solomon Mikhoels, was murdered in 1948, and leading members were executed in 1952.

The broader campaign against so-called “rootless cosmopolitans” followed a similar logic. Jewish intellectuals, writers, and professionals were accused of insufficient patriotism, foreign sympathies, and attachments supposedly incompatible with their Soviet citizenship.

What makes this history particularly instructive is that suspicion did not necessarily arise from any change in the conduct of those accused. It arose from a change in how their identity and relationships were interpreted.

The creation of Israel in 1948 provided another focus for such suspicions. Jewish interest in the new state could be represented as evidence of political allegiance to a foreign country, regardless of the individuals’ actual views or behavior.

Later Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns developed this reasoning further. Official propaganda repeatedly presented Zionism as a hostile international force, often drawing upon familiar antisemitic stereotypes while claiming to oppose a political ideology rather than Jews themselves.

The consequences of these campaigns cannot be compared with a hotel dispute in a democratic European country. Stalinist persecution involved state violence, imprisonment, executions, and the destruction of Jewish institutions. The historical circumstances and the scale of suffering were entirely different.

Yet comparison does not require equivalence. It can reveal the persistence of a particular way of thinking.

The essential mechanism is the attribution of political loyalty on the basis of Jewish identity.

In the Soviet case, the authorities often treated Jewish cultural solidarity or international contacts as grounds for doubting a person’s loyalty to the state. In contemporary Europe, the assumption may take another form: a Jew is presumed to have a political relationship with Israel that must somehow be explained, justified, or disavowed.

The old accusation of dual loyalty has therefore undergone an interesting transformation. In the past, Jews were suspected of being insufficiently loyal to the countries in which they lived. Today, they may be presumed loyal to Israel without anyone bothering to establish whether that loyalty exists.

This is particularly troubling because it shifts the burden of explanation onto the individual.

A Jewish citizen may have strong emotional ties to Israel, may disagree profoundly with its government, may feel indifferent toward Israeli politics, or may have no personal connection to the country at all. None of these possibilities can be inferred from Jewish identity alone.

Nor does attachment to Israel necessarily conflict with loyalty to one’s country of citizenship. Millions of people maintain cultural, religious, and emotional connections across national borders without having their civic loyalty questioned.

Why should Jews be treated differently?

Criticism of Israel, including criticism of its government and military actions, is a legitimate part of political debate. But when Jewish individuals or organizations are expected to answer for those actions merely because they are Jewish, political criticism has crossed into collective attribution of responsibility.

This distinction matters especially when the consequences extend beyond public argument.

A hotel reservation, a university event, a cultural gathering, or a community institution should not become subject to special political scrutiny simply because Jews are involved.

There is another aspect of the Dublin story worth considering. According to Cohen, the reservations had already been confirmed before the hotel management learned more about the conference. The decisive issue, in his account, was not a change in the guests’ conduct or in the practical requirements of their stay, but a change in how the group was perceived.

This recalls a central finding of my research into postwar Soviet antisemitism: suspicion often precedes evidence and then determines how otherwise ordinary facts are interpreted.

Once Jewish identity becomes associated with presumed foreign allegiance, even routine activities may acquire an imagined political significance.

Maurice Cohen concluded his speech by invoking Ireland’s traditional reputation as a land of a hundred thousand welcomes. He suggested that the real test of hospitality is whether people remain welcome after their identity becomes known.

His observation reaches beyond the hospitality industry and beyond Ireland.

European democracies have made important commitments to combating antisemitism. Those commitments will remain incomplete if Jewish citizens and organizations are expected to demonstrate their political innocence before enjoying the ordinary rights and courtesies extended to others.

The Dublin incident, as Cohen described it, is a reminder that old prejudices do not always return in their original language. Sometimes they survive through familiar assumptions that have become so ordinary that those making them may no longer recognize their historical origins.

The accusation of dual loyalty is one such assumption.

A century ago, Jews were asked whether they could truly belong to the nations in which they lived. Today, some are effectively being asked whether they can be Jewish without representing Israel.

The question itself tells us how much of the old suspicion remains.