Tracing the deep roots of Irish support for the Palestinians
Under the light drizzle of a Tuesday morning last month, Ríonach Ní Néill and a group of friends set up a small platform in front of the American embassy in Dublin.
Then they took out a stack of papers. Over the next eleven and a half hours, Ms. Ní Néill and others took turns reading out thousands of names — each a person killed since Israel began bombing Gaza in the war, according to a list released by Gaza health authorities.
It was an attempt to convey the enormity of the loss of life, she said.
“I think the basic principle in Ireland is actually that human rights are valued, and what is happening now is the destruction of universal human rights,” said Ms Ní Néill, 52, an artist from Galway. “This is not something that can be ignored.”
In Ireland, support for Palestinian citizens runs deep, rooted in what many see as a shared history of British colonialism and the experience of a seemingly intractable and traumatic conflict, which in Ireland’s case came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, which Israeli authorities say killed around 1,200 people, and the subsequent bombing of Gaza, Ireland has become something of an outlier in its position on the conflict in Europe.
While condemning Hamas’s atrocities, lawmakers across the Irish political spectrum were among the first in Europe to call for the protection of Palestinian civilians and denounce the scale of Israel’s response, which health officials in Gaza say left more than 13,000 people dead. has cost her life. number of victims with few precedents in the 21st century.
Last month, Leo Varadkar, the Prime Minister of Ireland, said he strongly believed that Israel had the right to defend itself, but that what was happening in Gaza “looks like something approaching revenge.”
Irish President Michael D. Higgins, whose position as head of state is considered above political fray, described this “unanimous aversion” to the Hamas attacksbut said Israeli attacks killing civilians threatened to leave human rights agreements “in tatters.”
These views are mainstream in Ireland. This is evident from an opinion poll published last month, approximately 71 percent of respondents classified Israel’s response as “disproportionately severe.” About 65 percent also said Hamas should be officially banned as a terrorist organization. Tens of thousands have taken part in weekly protests calling for an end to Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Jane Ohlmeyer, professor of history at Trinity College Dublin and author of ‘Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World’, said the country’s status as a former British colony has ‘undoubtedly shaped how people from Ireland deal with post-colonial conflict .”
That history sets Ireland apart from a number of other countries in Western Europe, many of which were imperial powers themselves, she added, as the country developed common ground with the Palestinians.
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I Britain gained administrative control about the area then known as Palestine. The then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour – who was previously the British Chief Secretary for Ireland and was known for his sometimes brutal suppression of Irish demands for independence – had expressed his country’s support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
A few years later, Britain granted independence to much of the island of Ireland, but retained the six provinces that are still part of Northern Ireland and remain part of the United Kingdom. That legislation provided the model for the partition of other former British colonies, including India and Pakistan in 1947, “and Israel and Palestine” the following year, Dr. Ohlmeyer said.
British officials have drawn their own parallels between the Irish and the Palestinians. Ronald Storrs, who served as governor of Jerusalem from 1917 to 1926, wrote in his memoirs that if enough Jewish people moved to Palestine, it would be “asmall loyal Jewish Ulster‘in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism’ – a reference to English settlers sent to Northern Ireland in what became known as the ‘plantation of Ulster.”
Maurice Cohen, the chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said in an interview that public sentiment in Ireland had initially supported Jewish efforts to create a state of Israel and the fight against British rule – a fact he said has often been overlooked in modern times. Ireland.
“Maybe because we’ve always felt like we’re the underdog here, so we always root for the underdog,” Mr. Cohen, 73, said. “Growing up, there was always a great affinity with the Israelis because they were also considered the underdog.”
Yet that support later shifted to the Palestinian cause, he said, amid growing criticism of the Israeli state’s settlement expansion and displacement of Palestinian communities.
Ireland has a small Jewish population of around 2,700, out of a total population of 5.3 million. And Mr Cohen said that while anti-Semitic rhetoric had increased online since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict, it had not spilled over into major violence in Ireland. Moreover, while he mourned that the conversation about the current conflict had lost depth and nuance, he said the leaders of all the country’s political parties had assured him “that they will not tolerate any anti-Semitism in Ireland.”
But even though Ireland, like the rest of Europe, has favored a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades and has engaged with leaders from both sides, relations with Israel have deteriorated in the weeks since October 7 .
On Sunday, Israel summoned the Irish ambassador for a reprimand a post from Mr Varadkar on the social media platform in which he described the release of a young Israeli-Irish hostage as “an innocent child who was lost, now found and returned.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen suggested on
Many Irish commentators pointed out that Mr Varadkar’s language was metaphorical and reflected Biblical references to being lost and found.
In an interview with the Irish public broadcaster on Wednesday, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, whose grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Irelandsaid he disagreed with the Foreign Secretary’s criticism of Mr Varadkar, but also questioned what he called Ireland’s “indifference to the pain endured by Israelis”.
For some who lived through the conflict in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century, the war in Gaza brings to mind the trauma of the past, but also the possibility of hope. Less than a week after the Hamas attacks, Patrick Kielty, host of “The Late Late Show,” the Irish Friday night television series, offered a message to “all the families whose lives have been torn apart this week in Israel and Palestine.”
Mr Kielty grew up in Northern Ireland and his father was murdered in 1988 by a paramilitary group that supported the territory’s ties with Britain. “There were days when we thought it would never end,” he says told the audience.
“We are currently experiencing our own miracle on this island because we live in peace,” Mr Kielty added. “To all of you who find yourself in Israel and Palestine tonight, it may not seem like it, but there is always hope, and we hope your miracle comes soon.”