It’s a widely known secret within Israeli diplomatic circles that Ireland is seen as something of a lost cause.
While the Irish left is quick to react with fury to any accusations of anti-Semitism, insisting instead that they are merely opposed to Zionism and the Israeli government’s policies, sometimes that seems a distinction without a difference. This week has certainly been one of those times.
The Irish like to pride themselves on their internationalist outlook, but as a frustrated Israeli diplomat once informed me, the Irish are ‘Jew blind’
As the true horrors of what happened in Israel began to emerge this weekend, I naively remarked to my wife that maybe, just maybe, this might be the moment when the Irish people who seem to hate Israel with an implacable fury finally see what it is like to live in the only democracy in the region.
‘Don’t bet on it,’ she replied. ‘Have you seen what they’re writing on Twitter?’
Before the bodies were even cold, there was an air of grotesque exultation on many Irish social media sites, with the hashtag #karma attached to countless posts. It was a disgusting spectacle. At this point it was no longer possible to justify the response of so many Irish people as naivety. This was positively wicked. Israel is facing the worst pogrom since the Holocaust and many of my fellow citizens are openly celebrating the atrocities.
Initially, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar seemed to get the tone right. He seemed to understand the gravity of the situation and expressed his horror at what we were all seeing unfold on the news channels. By Monday, this had changed.
Rather than offering unequivocal support and succour to the Israeli people, he began scolding them and stood up in the Dail to warn that any response ‘must be proportionate’.
What does that even mean? More than a thousand Israelis have been slaughtered. Young women were raped over the bodies of their dead friends. Holocaust survivors have been kidnapped and brought to Gaza as human shields (or worse) and 260 children who were attending a rave in the desert were brutally slaughtered and defiled. And Varadkar is worried about a disproportionate response?
To make matters worse, Varadkar warned the Israelis that they would quickly lose international solidarity if they went ‘too far’. Does he honestly think the Israelis care about squandering international support at this point? As we have seen in the past week, Israel enjoys precious little international support as it is.
Varadkar then slammed Israel for cutting off water and electricity to the Gaza Strip, saying: ‘To me, it amounts to collective punishment. Cutting off power, cutting off fuel supplies and water supplies, that’s not the way a respectable democratic state should conduct itself.’ What the chin-stroking bien pensants of the supposedly progressive Irish left never seem to understand is that Israel is fighting an existential battle for its literal survival.
The sickening scenes in the Dail continued throughout the week. Mary Lou McDonald, head of Sinn Fein, ludicrously called for an immediate cease fire. Sure, she was quick to utter a few platitudes about the massacres, but it was quickly back down to business as she blamed Israel for breaking international law.
Is there any other county in the world which would be expected to tolerate such depravity and slaughter of its own citizens and then accept being lectured that they must refrain from retaliation and instead sign a cease fire?
With grotesque inevitability, it didn’t end there. Extreme far-left politicians such as Paul Murphy and Richard Boyd Barrett (wearing a fetching keffiyeh scarf) stood in the Dail and laid the blame for this horror at the feet of Israel. Former Irish President Mary Robinson, who has never been a friend of Israel, issued the same meaningless platitudes we have come to expect, while once again attacking Israel.
Things became so awful that I had to stop watching the Irish news broadcasts, because I found myself becoming increasingly upset and furious at the lies and distortions which were allowed to be disseminated without any challenge or correction.
There has always been a rump of Irish people who simply hate the Jews. After all, we had our very own pogrom in the city of Limerick back in 1904. Modern day prejudice is simply dressed in better clothing than the ugly scenes of sectarianism back then.
These days, it’s couched as purely a form of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
But even so, that is tainted by a form of reverse racism. Many Irish progressives seem to look on the Palestinians as if they are cuddly hobbits, mercilessly persecuted by the Jewish orcs, as opposed to people with their own agency.
The events of this week have exposed the ugly face of anti-Semitism in all its hideousness. Many decent Irish people left floral tributes outside the Israeli embassy. They were quickly damaged by well-heeled, white middle class Irish protestors.
Synagogues have been forced to close up and hire extra security. I know Jewish people who are simply afraid to leave their house. This is the face of Ireland in 2023.
The Irish like to pride themselves on their internationalist outlook and concern for other people, but as a frustrated Israeli diplomat once informed me, the Irish are ‘Jew blind.’
In other words, we pretend to have solidarity for all the nations of the world – except for the Jewish people. As she put it, ‘you only like us when we’re dead.’
A young Irish girl was one of the dead in Israel, killed at the rave in the desert. We had the heart-breaking sight of her Irish father, Thomas Hand, say that he felt relief when he heard his own eight-year old daughter has been murdered, because ‘she was either dead or in Gaza. And if you know anything about what they do to people in Gaza, that is worse than death, that is worse than death.’
Yet somehow, even in the face of this horror, so many Irish people seek to justify the actions of Hamas and present the Palestinians as the true victims. They do not acknowledge that Hamas, and their political bed fellows Islamic Jihad, are religious fanatics who are fighting a war of genocide that won’t end until every Jew has been killed.
This week has been a genuinely embarrassing stain on the legacy of Irish media and politics. I’ve never before been ashamed to be Irish. But I’m ashamed this week.
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