The twisted roots of Ireland’s historical antipathy to Israel

Last month, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, ordered the closure of its embassy in Dublin. It followed an Irish proposal to join South Africa in the “genocide” accusation at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Ireland, together with Spain and Norway, have formally recognised the State of Palestine. 

This was the latest episode in a history of support by the Irish Republic for the cause of the Palestinians, stretching back to 1957. Frank Aikin, the then Irish Foreign Minister, called the world’s attention to the plight of the Palestinian refugees – and asked how many Israel would be willing to take back.

Ireland emerged as a leading critic after it gained membership of the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU, in 1974. This provided Ireland access to Arab markets.

Following the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Arab oil-rich states dramatically increased the price of oil and offered inducements to many countries to break off diplomatic relations with Israel. Ireland initiated negotiations with numerous states in the Arab world in order to establish diplomatic relations with them.

Dublin rightly spoke about human rights in some locations but easily forged diplomatic relations with murderous regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Ireland shortly afterwards condemned Israel’s bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor.

Ireland had traditionally favoured a two-state solution and argued that its policy was always balanced and fair. However, many regarded this balance as tilting in favour of the Palestinian cause while being accompanied by a selective outrage about Israeli actions. So when the UK abstained on a vote for PLO participation in the UN General Assembly in 1974, Ireland voted in support. To maintain the balance, it opposed the “Zionism is Racism” UN Resolution in 1975.

Ireland wanted to stop US arms transfers to Israel passing through Shannon Airport during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. An Israeli official was expelled in 2010 when a team of Mossad agents, travelling on eight fake Irish passports, assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Al-Mabhouh was a founder of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and a procurer of arms from Iran for use in Gaza.

In April 2018, Dublin City Council became the first municipality in a European capital to embrace the BDS movement and to call for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador. More recently the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund decided to divest its Israeli assets. This would include shareholdings in Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, and Rami Levi, one of Israel’s leading supermarket chains.

During the past year, the Irish government has consistently condemned every aspect of Israeli military action in Gaza and added a few words of concern about the fate of the hostages – almost as an afterthought. For Netanyahu and for many Likud-led administrations, Ireland has been seen as a stubborn, uncompromising irritant.

The Irish see the Jews in Israel as they saw the British in the past and this is their model for the Israeli presence in the West Bank – as occupiers and oppressors. And yet the Likud and Irish Republicanism share parallel histories.

A century ago, the maximalist wing of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionists looked to the Irish struggle for inspiration. It was a period when they confronted a common enemy, British imperialism. Abba Ahimeir, the forgotten ideological mentor of the maximalists, even wrote an article entitled Sinn Fein – Ourselves Alone! - in 1930.

The members of Lehi (the Stern Gang) read Irish republican literature and translated it into Hebrew. Yitzhak Shamir, later prime minister of Israel, was the head of military operations of Lehi in the early 1940s. He had studied the Irish struggle and took the name of Mikhael as his nom de guerre due to his admiration for Michael Collins, the progenitor of the IRA.

Today such history is not mentioned. Gideon Saar, instead, expressed his rage at the Irish and told a recent gathering at the Knesset:

"Israel starves children? When Jewish children died of hunger in the Holocaust, you were at best neutral in the war against Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill, during the war, in his speech on V-Day in Europe, noted how Ireland had carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany."

Yet Vladimir Jabotinsky – much feted by Netanyahu and seen by him as the ideological founder of the Likud – had actually met Irish Prime Minister Éamon De Valera in Dublin in January 1938. De Valera opposed the British proposal to partition Palestine into two states in 1937 – just as they had divided Ireland into two states.

De Valera had very good relations with the Jewish community in Ireland but infamously signed a condolence book at the German Embassy when Hitler killed himself. Ireland was subsequently refused admittance to the United Nations after 1945. It had been blocked because of its policy of neutrality during World War II. Yet De Valera visited Israel in 1950 where he had dinner with Ben-Gurion at Chief Rabbi Herzog’s home. 

Following the closure of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin, Gideon Saar also spoke about “the antisemitic actions and rhetoric” of the Irish government. While this claim is a common knee-jerk reaction from ministers in Netanyahu’s government, Saar was on safer ground this time, albeit historically – and probably not realising it.

The conservative Catholic Church in Ireland was always keen to fashion the imagery of Jews as both Christ-killers and Bolsheviks. Even before the Easter Rising in 1916 against the British, Sinn Féin ran "No Jews" advertisement in their periodicals.

The fascist Blueshirts marched in Ireland during the 1930s with their overwhelmingly Catholic membership while the Irish Christian Front supported General Franco in Spain. Irish governments did not want too many Jews in the country.

Robert Briscoe, a Jew and a one-time gunrunner for the Irish Republicans, was elected to the Irish parliament. Yet he failed to secure visas for many German Jews, including his aunt Hedwig and her daughter who were in Berlin. Hedwig died in Auschwitz along with 150 other members of Briscoe's extended family.

On the basis of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, Sean Russell, then the Chief of Staff of the IRA, made contact with the Nazis even before the outbreak of World War II. Operation Kathleen had envisaged an IRA uprising of 30,000, joined by a German invasion force of 50,000, to take Northern Ireland and use it as a Nazi base to attack northern England.

An Anti-Defamation League survey taken in Ireland in 2014 – at a time of conflict with Hamas – indicated that 52% of respondents believed that Jews were more loyal to Israel than to Ireland. This was followed by other responses which honoured time-worn racist canards about Jews.

It took Dublin until 1963 to recognise Israel de jure and the 1990s for an Israeli embassy to open. Irish reticence to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, however, was not predicated on the fate of the Palestinians but on the Vatican’s position on Jerusalem. It preferred internationalisation rather than the control of the Jews.

The story of Israel and Ireland is to some extent one of mirror images, a megaphone war of shouting and insults. The Good Friday agreement of 1998 showed that there is a different way – let us hope that a future Israeli government and its Palestinian partner can emulate it.