The ravages of the 2008–2013 period aside, Ireland has proved an economic behemoth since 1995, punching well above its weight. Merrion Street has outflanked and out-thought its old enemy, Britain, as even a cursory glance at the balance sheets of the current respective governments can attest.
But something else has happened. Ireland appears to have become a darker place where antagonism towards some groups, and an entire nation, has prevailed.
The Irish were always famed for being a tolerant people – historically almost all Catholic, but rarely prejudiced against non-Catholics, at least not in the 26 counties. Protestants, Jews and others have thrived and contributed to the country’s development. There have been exceptions: the Limerick pogrom against Jews and the treatment of the Traveller community. But in general, Ireland was a welcoming and generous nation.
My grandfather was among those who were on the receiving end of that welcome and generosity. He was a three-year-old Jewish refugee, arriving with many penniless families escaping the Ukrainian pogroms at the end of the 19th century, who went on to greatness in Irish medicine.
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History has repeated itself 120 years later with the second great wave of Ukrainian immigration.
Immigration into Ireland was also driven by the economic miracle and the growing need for migrant workers, and the requirement to embrace the displaced from countries other than Ukraine. These pressures have contributed to an increasingly febrile atmosphere.
Malign forces on the right – fortunately as yet a very small minority – have aimed to exploit these tensions. However, so far at least, the Irish that I knew growing up in Dublin have largely resisted these provocations.
There is one exception: the extreme opprobrium against Israel, which has made life deeply uncomfortable for Jews who identify with Zionism, or the belief in a Jewish homeland as enshrined in the Old Testament. The left, followed closely by the centre, has pursued what has now become the predominant establishment position: one that is pro-Palestine and hostile to Israel. This is reflected in academia, unions and the media.
Ireland has demonised and dehumanised an entire nation ... much of the rhetoric directed at Israel and its people goes beyond strong criticism or sanction – it has been inflammatory, and sometimes hateful
The tragic, intractable conflict in the Middle East has preoccupied official Ireland, and an increasingly punch-drunk public. Ireland has not taken a neutral approach. It is not a mediating, supportive voice for the region. Instead, its stance is partisan and one sided.
The issue I have is not that Ireland is pro-Palestine – I myself as a centrist believe in the autonomy and rights of the Palestinian people - but that it is so aggressively anti-Israel. There is no doubt the war has brought a terrible death toll and suffering to Palestinians living in Gaza; war is always ugly.
But facts that are inconvenient are ignored in Ireland – principally the fact that Israel is a country of millions of moderate Jews who seek peace, including its Irish-rooted president, Isaac Herzog.
Equally ignored is the fact that Israel’s decision to go to war after October 7th was not a choice; it had no choice. The Israeli state’s response to October 7th was globally supported – even if the subsequent extent of the operation within Gaza has caused immense debate and criticism, in Israel as much as anywhere else. Had Hamas released the hostages and laid down their arms days after October 7th, the war would have ended much sooner. This truth is rarely acknowledged in Ireland.
While the initial war aims achieved widespread internal public support, as time passed and the terrible effects upon the population of Gaza became ever more apparent, critical voices have risen to a roar in Israel. This was not an attack on their own country or fellow citizens, but against government policy.
This distinction is crucial when considering the anti-Israel position that Ireland has adopted, an animus so severe that Ireland is now the only major European country where Israel felt no option but to close its embassy, even as it opened new ones in Estonia, Zambia and even Bolivia.
The word “genocide” has since been reinterpreted by many not to mean the deliberate extermination of a group based on ethnicity, but to refer to the tragic consequences of war. By the standard to which Israel is held, every major war has been genocidal, including the US nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ireland has demonised and dehumanised an entire nation – an imperfect nation, yes, with its own fair share of bad actors and extremists. But much of the rhetoric directed at Israel and its people goes beyond strong criticism or sanction – it has been inflammatory, and sometimes hateful. A McCarthyite fervour has overtaken Ireland where Israel is concerned.
The accusation of “apartheid” in Israel has been used to great effect by Israel’s opponents and, within Ireland it has gained universal traction. The word originates from the treatment of blacks by whites in South Africa, the most egregious form of discrimination imaginable.
But it doesn’t describe what I see in Israel. There is inequality – mainly in relation to those Palestinians living in Israel, who are not afforded certain rights. You hear far more in Ireland about this than you do about its own treatment of the Traveller community.
By far the most egregious of the attacks levelled at Israel is the false equivalence between the Shoah – the methodical extermination of six million Jews – and Israel’s war on Hamas. I do not wish to lessen the impact of a single life lost in war, but to equate Israel’s actions with the Holocaust is a sickening perversion of the truth. This hurts every Jew, not just Israelis, and is an act of grievous anti-Semitism.
And now the performative Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) is being pushed for completion by Ireland. Our new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Helen McEntee, has described it this week as her first priority. What will it achieve, other than to alienate the United States? .
[ US lawmakers intensify warnings to Taoiseach over Occupied Territories BillOpens in new window ]
Will Ireland risk its financial security in its determination to punish Israel with a Bill which achieves nothing more than performative self-congratulation and an appeal to the anti-Israel frenzy?
Yeats’s emotional tribute to those who forged our independence famously went: “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
But right now all I see where Israel is concerned is a terrible ugliness.
Ed Abrahamson is an Irish Jew who was born in Dublin and now lives with his husband in Cornwall. He is a consultant paediatrician and member of Cornwalls’s Jewish community Kehillat Kernow
