Rachel Moiselle on the Denial

In this episode of Quillette Cetera, Zoe Sankey speaks with Rachel Moiselle, a doctoral student in linguistics at Trinity College Dublin who has become one of the most visible voices against antisemitism in Irish public life. Of paternal Jewish heritage and raised Catholic, Moiselle began speaking out after October 7th and found herself, almost overnight, both a target and a lightning rod.

She and Zoe discuss why a country with fewer than 3,000 Jews devotes so much of its political and media energy to Israel, how anti-Zionism has taken on the fervour of a replacement faith in post-Catholic Ireland, and why Moiselle argues the real problem isn’t violence but denial. Along the way they turn to her research on Irish Sign Language and the deaf community, the anonymous Sinn Féin politician who hounded her for weeks, and the female friendships both women lost for refusing to stay quiet.

Transcript