Ireland's Jewish community is furious after the National Concert Hall in Dublin – a cultural institution funded by the Ministry of Culture – canceled a fundraising event for Magen David Adom (Israel's national emergency medical service) and a theatrical reading about the October 7 massacre, labeling the event "political" and incompatible with its commitment to "political neutrality." The decision came after two weeks of back-and-forth in which the organization repeatedly canceled and reinstated the event, which had been scheduled to take place this week.
"The cancellation by the National Concert Hall of MDA Ireland's scheduled private fund raising event can be properly described as an act of antisemitic censorship," Alan Shatter, chairman of Magen David Adom Ireland and former Irish Justice Minister, said.
"The National Concert Hall disgracefully & indefensibly canceling a Magen David Adom Ireland private fund raising event scheduled for May 11 at which the experiences of survivors of the Hamas massacre and of responders on October 7, over two years ago, were to be narrated in their own words in a staged reading is truly disgraceful and shocking," Shatter said.
He added, " am deeply saddened that we have arrived at the position in Ireland where it is acceptable that our publicly funded National Concert Hall and its board stop the factual, undecorated narration on one of its stages of the worst Jewish tragedy since the Holocaust that also impacted others, a tragedy involving murders, rapes and abductions and heroism of responders and rescuers."
The cancellation is only one episode in a series of decisions that have hurt Ireland's Jewish community over the past two years. Late last year, Dublin City Council voted to remove from its agenda a motion to rename Herzog Park, named after Chaim Herzog, the Dublin-born sixth president of Israel. The motion was not shelved entirely and may come back to a vote in the coming year.
