WHEN IRISH people speak about Gaza, they rarely do so from a place of abstraction. They speak from memory, from identity, from a story we tell ourselves about who we are. We are a small country with a long recollection of power exercised over us, and that history does not fade. It lives not only in books and commemorations but in the nervous system itself. Neuroscience shows that the brain does not experience the present in isolation. It carries emotional maps from the past, and when Irish people see images of bombed streets and grieving families, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex searches for meaning by linking what it sees to what it already knows or thinks it knows. For many here, that map points back to our own history of conflict, and the Palestinian story feels instantly familiar because it touches values that matter deeply in Ireland, fairness, independence, and the belief that no people should be ruled without consent. It must be remembered that these same instincts were present when the Jewish people were seen as the underdog before the State of Israel was founded and in its immediate aftermath. As Chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, I know that Irish Jews recognise those values because we share them. Our own history is also marked by vulnerability and by the search for a place of safety. That shared moral ground is the reason this conversation should be possible at all. Yet something quietly goes wrong when empathy becomes projection. The brain wants coherence. It wants a story that makes sense of pain, so it maps one conflict onto another. Palestinians become the Irish of yesterday. Israel becomes the empire of memory. It feels emotionally true even when it is historically false. This is not bad faith. It is how the brain works under emotional load. The amygdala reacts first. It looks for threat and injustice. The prefrontal cortex, which compares and distinguishes, lags behind. In that moment, moral certainty feels like safety and complexity feels like betrayal. A false dichotomy The result is a narrative in which Palestinians are treated as pure victims and Israelis as pure power. It is a story that satisfies the brain’s need for clarity, but does it actually describe the world we are in? This is where Irish Jews often feel a quiet sense of dislocation. We grieve for Palestinian families. We also grieve for Israeli families. We hold both because we have to. But we watch as one side is slowly stripped of humanity and the other of agency. Infantilisation is the key word here. In psychology, when someone is seen as helpless, they are also seen as not fully responsible. That might feel kind, but it is not. It removes dignity and power at the same time. Palestinians are not helpless. They are a society with leaders, factions, ideologies, and internal arguments. They have made decisions across decades that shaped their present. Some of those decisions led toward compromise. Others led toward catastrophe. To ignore this is to deny Palestinians the respect of being real people in history rather than a symbol in someone else’s story. Many Irish people care deeply about self-determination, and that value sits at the heart of our national myth. But self-determination means something very specific. It means taking responsibility for one’s own political life. If Palestinians are to have a future beyond war, they must have leadership that chooses life over ideology, that invests in schools rather than tunnels, and that builds institutions rather than militias. Holding Palestinians to this standard is not betrayal. It is belief in their strength. The same is true of Israelis. A secure future cannot be built on permanent control over another people. Fear explains much. It does not excuse everything. Peace demands accountability on both sides, which is what makes it so difficult. The brain prefers a single villain. Neuroscience calls this identity protection. When we emotionally commit to a narrative, any challenge to it feels like a threat to who we are. The anterior cingulate cortex detects conflict. The amygdala signals danger. We become defensive, and that is why debates about Israel and Palestine so quickly turn into moral shouting matches. They are not really about policy. They are about who we think we are. In Ireland this plays out daily in our media, our universities, and in the Oireachtas, where moral signaling often replaces serious engagement with outcomes. The need for realism Irish people want to see themselves as compassionate, fair, and on the side of the oppressed. Irish Jews do not dispute that. We only ask that compassion be paired with realism. Realism is not cynicism. It is the recognition that peace is built by people who have agency, not by children in need of rescue. When the West treats Palestinians only as victims, it quietly removes pressure from those who lead them. It also removes the possibility that Palestinians might one day choose a different path. This has happened before in history. Groups that are infantilised by their supporters are often trapped by that support. They are praised for suffering rather than for building. Jewish history knows this pattern well. We were often pitied. We were rarely trusted to shape our own destiny. That is why the Jewish longing for peace is not abstract. It is rooted in the belief that people must be allowed to be responsible for their own future. None of us in Ireland truly knows what is happening in Gaza or in Israel in real time. We see images. We hear claims. We encounter propaganda from all sides. Social media amplifies outrage because outrage keeps people watching. Humility is therefore essential. We should mourn. We should care. We should speak when conscience demands it. But we should not pretend to be judges in a fog of partial information. There is another reason why this conflict grips Ireland so tightly, and it has little to do with geography and much to do...
