Antisemitic discrimination in Ireland reaches a new low, canceling fundraiser featuring Oct. 7 survivor testimonies

"The National Concert Hall in Dublin has again canceled a private fundraising event by the Magen David Adom ambulance service’s fundraising arm in Ireland that would feature a play comprised of verbatim first-hand accounts from survivors and first responders from the Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Alan Shatter, the chairman of MDA Ireland, announced the cancellation in a statement on Sunday and called the move ‘an act of antisemitic censorship.’ The former justice minister said the concert hall’s ‘truly disgraceful’ and ‘indefensible’ decision to cancel the event for a second time would add to the ‘escalating global perception of Ireland as one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe.’ He asked for the concert hall’s board to reinstate the event and for those who called for its cancellation to resign. He said the ‘lack of insight and understanding is truly shocking.’

In a statement to The Algemeiner about its decision, the National Concert Hall (NCH) simply said, ‘The proposed event with MDA Ireland on 11 May will not proceed.’

The event on May 11 was scheduled to highlight first-hand testimonies of survivors of and responders to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre ‘narrated in their own words in a staged reading,’ according to Shatter. The ‘staged reading’ is a play written and produced by Irish veteran journalists and filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer based on interviews they did in Israel with those who lived through the attack. The play is titled ’October 7’ and was performed off-Broadway for six weeks, as well as at Princeton University, UCLA, Bowdoin College, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Every performance was sold out, according to McElhinney.

The date for the event at the National Concert Hall was finalized in February, but since then the NCH has canceled it and reversed the decision before canceling it again now, with each cancellation having ‘a spurious basis,’ Shatter explained. ‘What behind the scenes lobbying or pressure, if any, impacted the decision is unknown,’ he added.

MDA Ireland is a registered charity in Ireland that raises funds for MDA in Israel, where the organization operates as a national emergency medical response and ambulance service. It serves and employees members of all communities across Israel and is recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

‘It seems that the NCH regards it as wrong that the stories of the survivors and responders of Oct. 7, 2023, be told in their own words,’ Shatter said of the venue’s move to cancel the event on May 11. ‘I 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.’

MDA’s global president, former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, said the concert hall’s decision to cancel the event ‘is antisemitic – censorship tainted by bad faith and ignorance,’ adding that it shows that the venue’s ‘integrity and morality are compromised at best, and perhaps been abandoned entirely,’ according to a statement cited by Jewish News..."