Ireland versus Israel

From Geoffrey Clarfield from the American Thinker

Jews first came to Ireland in 1079.  But when Britain expelled all of its Jews in 1290, the Jews of Ireland were forced to leave.  A small number returned in the late 15th century as refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal.  In the 1700s, the synagogue in Dublin was forced to close.  In fact, “contributing to the closure may have been the government’s refusal to grant citizenship to Jews, despite other bills that gave citizenship to other foreign nationals.”

In the early 1920s and 1930s, Irish sympathies lay squarely with the Zionists and drew heavily on the presumed parallels between historical Irish and Jewish suffering.

Before 1948, “the Irish Jewish community, which had come overwhelmingly from Lithuania in the period from 1880 to 1914, was one of the most pro-Zionist in Western Europe and a major per capita supporter of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), as well as other Zionist organizations and institutions.”

But Irish nationalist perceptions toward Israel shifted, and Ireland became increasingly preoccupied with the fate of the Palestinian Arab refugees.

As a result, Ireland failed to give de jure recognition to Israel until 1963, some fifteen years after Israel’s declaration of independence.

Throughout the Oslo Accords era and beyond, Irish governments continued with unlimited support to the Palestinians.  In fact, Ireland has “one of the most organized and effective chapters of the international Palestine Solidarity Campaign whose goal is to isolate and delegitimize Israel, including an attempt to get Aer Lingus to cancel flights to Israel.”

Even as relations between Ireland and Israel worsened . . . many Irish politicians believed “that Israel [had] much to offer their country in the economic field and thus [thought] Ireland should not burn its bridges with it.”

In 2021, Lawrence Franklin maintained that the Jew-hatred from Ireland

“does not well up from the general public but seems clearly driven from the top down. . . .”

Thus, the fewer than 2,000 Irish Jews remaining in the country expressed concern about degrading Ireland-Israel ties.

And now it can be asserted that the antisemitism of Irish leaders has thrown their own economic interests to the wind.  It has now reached the point where relations between the two countries are simply untenable.

As Hugh Fitzgerald succinctly puts it, “Ireland has been overtaken by the virus of antisemitism.”

The Irish have decided that they are “willing to overlook, submit to, or even condone terrorism” as they recognize a Palestinian state and continue their hostility toward Israel. People forget that the Muslim regime of Colonel Gadaffi in Libya funded and trained the IRA for years in their terror campaign on English soil. 

Accordingly, the “Irish government has chosen to join South Africa in its charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice hoping to have the tiny and embattled Jewish state declared guilty of ‘genocide.’”

In essence, “[w]hat the Irish want is a definition of genocide so broad that it will fit Israel’s war in Gaza.  This, despite the fact that the Israel Defense Forces make tremendous efforts to minimize civilian casualties by warning civilians away from areas or buildings about to be targeted.”

But nothing matters to those whose hatred for Israel and Jews permeates their souls.

And by the way, this will be bad news for trade for the Irish, who “need Israeli chip technology more than Israel needs Irish butter.”

But this is the outcome as Ireland’s anti-Israel animus reveals itself.  It is the predictable end result of the manipulation of language, the ongoing lies, distortions, and massive rewriting of history through simplistic images by ill informed journalists and hate-filled politicians.

Indeed, the Emerald Isle continues to irrevocably besmirch itself.

Read it all here