On December 15, Israel announced the closure of its embassy in Ireland. Israel blamed extreme anti-Israel policies brought forth by the Irish government. The last straw may have been Ireland’s decision to join with South Africa in the case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that accuses Israel of genocide. Ireland has asked the ICJ to broaden its definition of genocide as it believes established genocide law is insufficient. It is an extraordinary example of how belief is evidence-free. Irish antisemitism joins the global surge in antisemitic hate crimes, and why Ireland has chosen to die on this hill is perhaps only known to Ireland. Antisemitism is not new. What is new, and what may have caught Ireland off guard, was the uncustomary muscular diplomatic response of the Israeli government. As it turns out, Israel does not need Irish butter after all.

Traditional sympathy towards Jews, if it occurs at all, happens at the graveyard. Author Dara Horn claims this is because people love dead Jews. Fascination with Jewish culture occurred by regarding it as a relic of the past. For the modern and living Jew in the aftermath of the Holocaust, many wonder if they were alive in 1939 and witnessed rising antisemitism, what choices would they have made? According to many historical accounts and testimonies by Holocaust survivors, the chance of survival was based mainly on luck. Many factors beyond individual agency seemed to impact who lived and died, including random selections, arbitrary decisions by guards, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

According to Pew Research, “Jews are more likely than people in the world’s other major religious groups to live outside their country of birth.” Jewish immigration may be influenced by multiple factors, with insecurity being a historical driver. This goes both ways; the rate of Israeli emigration sharply increased in 2023. However, this may soon be balanced by incoming Jewish immigration from Western Europe and North America. A deeper look into country-specific immigration trends shows that American and Canadian Jewish appeals for immigration to Israel have doubled since October 7^th, with similar trends in countries like Britain and France. As the adage goes, the grass is always greener on the other side.

When faced with the question of survival, the choices are to stay, run, or fight. Are these choices equally successful, as the “luck” thesis proposes? In the novel We Were the Lucky Ones, writer Georgia Hunter tells the story of the large Kurc family, based on her own family, who all survived the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Holocaust. Jews lived in Poland for 800 years before the Nazi occupation. In 1939, some 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland. By the end of the war, only 380,000 remained. To put it simply, if you were a Jew in Poland between 1939 and 1945, you had a roughly 90% chance of dying. All 22 members of Georgia Hunter’s great-grandparents’ family survived the Holocaust. The survival chance of these 22 people was so highly improbable that it can only be explained in one way. Survival or death was not simply a function of chance. Instead of We Were the Lucky Ones, Hunter’s novel should have been called “We Were the Extraordinarily Astonishingly Incredibly Highly Improbable Lucky Ones.”

As a pointed example, consider the famous Monty Hall problem, initially posted and solved in a letter by an American statistics professor, Steven Selvin. The problem goes like this: Suppose you’re on a game show and have the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He asks, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? In 1990, Marilyn Vos Savant of the column “Ask Marilyn” in Parade magazine responded that contestants should always switch to the other door. The switching strategy has a 2/3 chance of winning the car, while keeping the initial choice has only a 1/3 probability of winning.

The solution is so counterintuitive that it seems absurd, even though it is demonstrably true. This is known as a veridical paradox — something that runs contrary to one’s expectations. Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20^th century, remained unconvinced of Savant’s solution until he was shown a computer simulation demonstrating Savant’s predicted result. In “We Were the Lucky Ones,” each character was frequently faced with a deadly Monty Hall Problem. In that game, members of the Kurc family became separated while trying to survive.  Through time, family members would face a series of choices that ultimately would come down to staying put or running. In each instance, they ran. By that action, the odds of survival rose dramatically. Those who did not run faced a much slimmer chance of survival.

In 1939, many Jews fell victim to a veridical paradox when they considered the future actions of the Nazi Party. The idea of the destruction of European Jewry was so unimaginable as to be absurd. For many, the lesson from this dark period is an inclination towards proactivity. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing global spike in antisemitism, many Jews question whether they are faced with a similar dilemma. Students in America’s most hallowed colleges scream thinly veiled dog whistles for the death of Jews. Jewish sports fans were hunted and beaten in the streets of Amsterdam. Nearly 1/3 of Jewish physicians in Ontario, Canada, are considering leaving the country over fears of antisemitism.  In Melbourne, Australia, a well-established synagogue was intentionally set on fire with worshipers inside.

The Jewish world population is 15.8 million — 0.2% of the world’s population, with half living in Israel. No serious student of history believes antisemitism is not a real threat to Jewish survival. What is perhaps new and uncomfortable for many people is that the post-Holocaust Jew is prepared to fight in every instance, and with the Israeli Law of Return, many also have somewhere to run. Such actions increase the chance of survival. The question for the Jewish diaspora is, once again, where can they feel secure? Research has shown that humans are poor intuitive statisticians due to cognitive biases and heavy reliance on heuristics. What is so telling about probability is how our feeling of certainty is so disconnected from the math. Israeli emigration may continue to grow or abide depending on the government’s ability to convince the public they have restored security, or what they term “deterrence,” and the public’s pressure to maintain democratic institutions that carry public trust. As for the diaspora, Jewish emigration depends on governments to which they are minorities. Ireland has not taken Jewish safety seriously.

It remains to be seen if Irish antisemitism will turn violent as a matter of government policy.  The term ‘Luck of the Irish’ originated in the USA and means bad luck, not good luck, as most people think. It is an ironic phrase used to describe the sad and tragic history of the people of Ireland. The time for waiting and hoping is past. Luck is not a strategy, and hope is not a plan. To survive in the current time, Jews outside of Israel will run or fight, but they will not simply stay and do nothing. Foresight is the descendant of hindsight, and the Jews have learned their lesson.