Belfast-born playwright and TV writer David Ireland has declared that anyone in the arts taking a pro-Israel stance is perceived as a “Nazi”. Speaking to the BBC’s podcast The State of Us, Ireland said:
I think there’s a perception in the arts that if you have any sympathy with Israel at all, that you’re basically a Nazi.
Ireland went on to draw a confused picture melding support for the Zionist entity with fondness for Jewish people in general. Asked about the extent to which his affinity for so-called Israel might have been forged through reflexive opposition to the presence of Palestine flags in nationalist areas (Ireland is unionist), he said:
I don’t think I was aware of that.
He went on:
It was very much connected to hearing about, learning about the Holocaust as well, you know, and the foundation of the state of Israel and Jewish history.
He connected this to his:
…love of Jewish American culture and Jewish American cinema and movies, you know, stuff like Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers and all that.
While perhaps accidental here, this failure to separate Jewish people worldwide from the criminal land theft project known as ‘Israel’ has been a frequent means of tarring criticism of the latter as antisemitic.
Unionist siege mentality prevents proper reflection on the reality of pro-Israel views
The playwright said his upbringing in staunchly unionist areas such as Sandy Row and Ballybeen had an influence on his political viewpoint. He said:
…my stepfather was very pro-Israel and very philosemitic…the opposite of antisemitic.
He went on to say “he certainly passed that on to me”. Though hesitant to draw parallels between conflict in Ireland and that in Palestine, Ireland pointed out the similarities in the unionist and Israeli mindset:
I guess it’s about a feeling of being under siege, a feeling of being hated by the world, misunderstood by the world, and a sort of defiance about that as well. I think that’s the core of it.
The continued siege mentality of unionism is undoubted, and may worsen as former dominance of Six Counties politics continues to recede further in the rear view mirror. The fear of imminent violent backlash is a common phenomenon among previously dominant groups that exercised power unjustly and with limited prior challenge. It is present in other settler-colonial states, with white South Africans fearing pogroms in the event of electoral triumph for the African National Congress, and continued US panics around “white genocide”.
That this extends to automatic backing for an actual genocidal entity should be cause for alarm. The real backlash comes in a self-inflicted form, however, as Ireland alluded to the damaging psychological effect a siege mentality has on those who hold it:
…on a personal psychological level, I think I’ve carried that into my life…
Garrison mindset harms everyone involved
He continued:
It’s weird. I have this discomfort when I’m outside certain parts of Northern Ireland that…even though I live in Glasgow, I feel most comfortable when I’m on the Newtownards Road.
…as soon as I’m there, I feel like I can breathe a bit more easily, and I travel all over the world, and I still feel this discomfort and anxiety everywhere I am in the world.
The Newtownards road is a stronghold for the unionist community in East Belfast.
An unwillingness to step beyond this comfort zone of a reflexively pro-Zionist position is reflected in Ireland’s answer to host Declan Harvey’s probing on whether the writer has revised his position on ‘Israel’ given their campaign of mass murder in Gaza:
Have you questioned your philosemitic-ness [sic], your kind of pro-Israeli stance, given what we have seen over the last months, years?
Again, we see Jewish people and ‘Israel’ being conflated here, which can be put down to continued BBC ineptitude and/or malice, but in any event, Ireland’s reply was revealing:
…I’m not really across it, you know. I don’t really follow the news and I only hear about it what other people say.
This position conveniently allows Ireland not to hear anything that might reverse a position that’s been with him his whole life, and appears core to his identity. Fundamentally, there is no moral justification for constructing your own personal zone of Interest while a holocaust is ongoing, one backed by a significant number of the community you view yourself as part of.
Rounding out the bingo card of dubious takes on Palestine, we have another favourite – “it’s difficult/complicated”:
It’s a kind of impossible thing to talk about.
Yes – Zionists are the modern day Nazis
While it’s true that those who support so-called Israel may not be Nazis themselves, it is incontestable they are backing the closest modern equivalent to Hitler’s regime. The ethno-supremacist Zionist initiative against Palestinians has culminated in a holocaust, the cruelty and destructiveness of which have few parallels in human history. Former Israeli Occupation Forces soldier turned anti-Zionist, Professor Haim Bresheeth-Žabner has described Israeli crimes as worse than those of the Nazis.
Furthermore, hearing that pro-Israel sentiment is forbidden in the arts will be news to anyone with access to any form of screen. Our TVs have been clogged with a steady stream of pro-Zionist shit for some time now, with the likes of The Messiah and Fauda being particularly offensive examples of propaganda for the settler-colony. The recent Academy Award winning film The Brutalist also featured a transparently pro-Zionist framing, with ‘Israel’ presented as a safe haven from the antisemitism of the post World War II United States. Not covered is the fact anyone going there would be stealing Palestinian land.
Of much more concern should be the anti-Arab sentiment that still pervades our creative culture. The destruction of West Asian cities has been a fixture on our screens over the last two decades and more, normalising mass death and carnage in that part of the world. This has laid the foundation that has led Zionist destruction of Gaza to be seen by our political and media classes as simply the natural order of things. Contrast that with the shock and outrage in response to much less extreme scenes of warfare in Ukraine.
BBC still failing to hold power to account
This media failure extends to the BBC today. The chumminess of the interview between host Harvey and Ireland stands in stark contrast to the treatment meted out to a recent pro-Palestine activist interviewed by The State of Us. Máire Mhic an Fhailí was arrested for wearing a Palestine Action t-shirt at an anti-racist rally in August. For this monstrous offence, she was subject to a harsh grilling from Harvey and co-host Tara Mills.
Mhic an Fhailí was repeatedly treated as if she was genuinely a supporter of terrorism, being asked to account for alleged injuries caused by Palestine Action and justify damage done. These pale into utter insignificance in comparison to Zionist crimes. Taking actions to prevent genocide is a requirement under international law.
Yet Mills expressed grave concern for the economic costs resulting from inexplicable figure of £7 million of damage given for the damage Palestine Action activists did in spray-painting Royal Air Force warplanes:
But is causing £7 million worth of damage at RAF Bryce Norton, is that the way to make your protest about what you think she [former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper] should or shouldn’t be doing? I mean, £7 million, the cost to the economy. Could that money not have been better spent?
Incurious artists need to step outside their default assumptions
In so doing, she showed more concern for the non-sentient machinery of death than she did throughout the interview for the murdered children of Gaza. The contrast in the two interviews encapsulate the utter poverty of BBC journalism in the year 2025 – a 73 year old grandmother and part-time activist is grilled like she has access to the nuclear codes, while a man with a significant platform to influence the public conversation is met with friendly banter and sympathetic questioning.
Thus, the BBC fails to hold power to account, and Ireland fails to see where it lies. While one can overdo holding artists rather than politicians to account, prominent examples of the former nonetheless have a responsibility to use their platform responsibly. In the case of David Ireland, that means fulfilling one of the key roles of the artist – to have a basic curiosity about the world around you, rather than bury your head in the sand and fall back on flawed narratives inculcated at birth.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/PavilionTheatreGlasg
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