Israel Leaves Ireland

Israel’s closure of its embassy in Ireland plumbs the nadir between the two erstwhile outposts of the British Empire. The Jewish state ascribes the shuttering to “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.” The final straw was Dublin’s decision last week to join South Africa’s inquisition against Israel at the Hague. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, declares that “Ireland has crossed every red line in its relations with Israel.”He’s given to understatement. Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, adds the color, telling the Israeli broadcaster Kann that there is “an anti-Israel obsession” in the country and describing “a systematic hate campaign” directed against her embassy. The prejudice that Ms. Erlich detects is of such virulence that she judges it to be nothing less than “the current incarnation of ancient anti-Semitism.” The latest provocation concerns “genocide.” Ireland’s foreign ministry explains that the country will ask the International Court of Justice “to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a State.” Meaning that Ireland knows that Israel is not guilty of the crime, so it seeks to redefine the crime to make Israel guilty. Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, took to X to reject the “assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace.” As if the two were incompatible.Ms. Erlich, who was recalled back to Jerusalem in May following Dublin’s recognition of a Palestinian state, reckons that the “presence of the embassy had turned into a source of incitement.” That appears, though, to mistake cause and effect. Ireland’s extraordinary anti-Israel animus is predictably, generating hate toward Jews closer to home. The country’s Jewish community, already small and beleaguered, could soon be gone.This is an outrage because encounters between the Irish and the Jews have generated wonders. James Joyce made his greatest creation, Leopold Bloom of “Ulysses,” an Irish Jew. Both Dublin and Cork once had Jewish lord mayors. The grandfather of Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, was chief rabbi of Ireland, spoke fluent Irish, and was known as “the Sinn Féin Rabbi.” He supported both the Irish Republican Army and the Irgun. Joyce has Bloom daydream on “Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them in soiled dungarees.” Later on, he recites two lines of the song that would become Israel’s national anthem — “Kolod balejwaw pnimah Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.” Bloom describes himself as both an “Irishman” and belonging to a “race that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant.”Ireland’s present turn against the Jews and their state, though, has its roots in the last century. The country was neutral during World War II, refusing to fight alongside Great Britain. That, though, does not explain why the country’s leader during the war, Éamon de Valera paid in 1945 a visit to the German embassy at Dublin to express condolences for the death of Adolf Hitler. Further back, in 1904, there was a pogrom at Limerick.Irish leaders, who in the waves of Palestinian terrorism appear to discern an echo of their own struggle against London, can appear tone deaf to Jewish concerns. After an Irish-Israeli girl, Emily Hand, was taken hostage by Hamas and finally freed, the then-prime minister, Leo Varadkar, lamented that she had been “lost.” Ireland only recognized Israel in 1963, and opened an embassy there, astoundingly, only in 1996. In November, the Guardian reported that a former Irish diplomat, Niall Holohan, reasoned that Ireland’s tiny Jewish community of 2,500 has “given us a freer hand to take what we consider a more principled position” — against Israel. Now, Iran has an embassy in the country, universities are being declared “Zionist-free Zones,” and terrorist flags flutter in the streets. Meanwhile, Israel, winning its wars, seeks friends elsewhere.

Israel Leaves Ireland

Israel Leaves Ireland

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