Tag Archives: Palestine

Catching up with modern Ireland

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While I’m on summer break here’s another of my occasional roundups of external stories about Irish history and contemporary issues. MH

  • US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has joined a chorus of pro-Israel Americans who are publicly pressuring Ireland against passing a bill that bans the importation of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Huckabee has inflamed the controversy with this slur against the Irish on his X feed:

“Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness & propose something so stupid that it would be attributed to act of diplomatic intoxication? It will harm Arabs as much as Israelis. Sober up Ireland! Call (the Israeli foreign affairs ministry) & say you’re sorry!”

The Journal.ie provides all the necessary background. This story will be worth following because:

  • Ireland is already facing significant economic headwinds as US President Donald Trump threatens to impose 30 percent tariffs on the European Union starting Aug. 1. Passage of the Occupied Territories Bill could make Ireland a target for even higher tariffs. And there’s still more danger: Ireland’s overreliance on US foreign direct investment. Politico.eu offers a compelling analysis of how Trump is testing Ireland’s economic miracle.
  • The population of the island of Ireland has topped 7 million for the first time since before the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, according to the Republic of Ireland’s Central Statistics Office and Northern Ireland’s Statistics and Research Agency. Growth in the Republic was more robust and more diverse.
  • Proposals for the commercial redevelopment of the General Post Office (GPO), site of the 1916 Easter Rising, is generating debate about the past, present and future of the O’Connell Street corridor. Irish Times historian Diarmaid Ferriter calls for an approach that not only respects history but also “improves the perception of a space widely regarded as deficient and devoid of sufficient imagination for the main thoroughfare of a capital city.”
  • A new survey from the Iona Institute for Religion and Society finds more erosion of Catholic identification in Ireland. First Things columnist John Duggan contends that progressives are trying to speed the erasure of Catholicism from Irish history.
  • Cross-border, anti-migrant mobilization among ethnonationalist groups in Ireland and Northern Irish Loyalist communities has entered a new, more organized phase. What began as scattered, localized protests in late 2022 have evolved into an increasingly structured and internationally connected movement, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a global nonprofit that monitors extremism and authoritarianism. … An effigy of a boat containing mannequins of migrants was set alight in the village of Moygashel as part of Northern Ireland’s annual 12 July bonfires. 
  • The campaign to succeed Michael D Higgins as president of Ireland is beginning to warm. The election date will be set in late autumn, with the inauguration in early November.  Higgins, 84, is concluding his second seven-year term. Fine Gael’s Mairead McGuinness and independent TD Catherine Connolly of Galway have declared to date.

This is Ireland’s only national election. The president’s duties include the appointment of the taoiseach, members of the Government, judges and other officials; summoning and dissolving the Dáil, and convening the Oireachtas; and signing legislation into law and/or referring Bills to the Supreme Court. As important, the president serves as the people’s representative and spokesperson, a super ambassador to the world.

I’ll have more on this election later this fall.

Edward S. Walsh, left, assumed the office of US Ambassador to Ireland after presenting his credentials to President of Ireland Michael D Higgins in a ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin in Dublin on July 1.

On recognition & partition: Ireland, Israel, & Palestine

Ireland’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood has gravely disrupted diplomatic relations between Ireland and Israel. The latter condemned the gesture as “a reward for terrorism” perpetrated by Hamas in October and withdrew its ambassador from Dublin.

On May 22, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris said:

“On the 21st of January 1919 Ireland asked the world to recognize our right to be an independent State. Our ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ was a plea for international recognition of our independence, emphasizing our distinct national identity, our historical struggle, and our right to self-determination and justice. Today we use the same language to support the recognition of Palestine as a State.” Read his full statement, which also condemns the Hamas attack and supports the Israeli state.

The recognition has generated a new round of media stories about why the Irish identify so strongly with the Palestinians. Such reports began long before the civilian death toll in Gaza from Israeli military strikes surpassed the number of victims from the Hamas incursion into Israel.

Palestinian flag

Fourteen months before that attack, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab wrote a piece headlined “Comparing the Palestinian and Irish-Catholic Struggles.” In each case, he wrote, “a powerful force oppressed local indigenous populations in a clearly racist and paternalistic fashion.” He also details their differences with today’s Northern Ireland.

Kuttab noted that U.S. President Joe Biden, during a July 2022 speech in East Jerusalem, compared the Irish-Catholic struggle against Great Britain to the Palestinians against Israel. But the journalist questioned whether Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, is capable of “real and actionable policies related to Israel and the Palestinians.” The Biden administration has criticized Ireland’s recognition of Palestine, which was joined by Spain and Norway. But Ireland enjoys far more attention and goodwill from the U.S. government than the other two European nations.

In late May, a headline in the Jesuit magazine, America, declared, “Ireland recognizes Palestinian statehood: Why many Irish people resonate with the conflict in Palestine.”

Notice for Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest against U.S. weapons to Israel being shipped through Ireland. The bill has been delayed.

The piece quotes an Irish documentary filmmaker who says the Irish have a deep cultural memory of British rule and know what being colonized by a stronger neighbor is like more than most nations. The filmmaker has documented the efforts of peace activists to prevent the U.S. military from using Shannon airport in the west of Ireland as a refueling stopover for its Middle East adventurism, including arms shipments to Israel.

Catherine Connolly, an independent member of the Irish parliament, raised the Shannon issue in a May 23 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Connolly rejected the suggestion that Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is a prize for terrorism. “This is a step for peace,” she said.

Partition plans

The sectarian and territorial conflicts between the Palestinians and the Israelis parallel those between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, in the north of Ireland, as detailed by M.C. Rast at History Today.

“Ireland and Palestine: United by Partition?” recounts how British officials in late 1930s planned to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in much the same way they had divided Ireland along sectarian lines nearly two decades earlier. A British report suggested “the gulf between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is wider than that which separates Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State.”

Rast also quotes Dublin’s Irish Independent newspaper as saying: “Partition is the Englishman’s favorite way out of a difficulty. But it is in itself a confession of failure.”

Economic impact

The economic impact of Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is beginning to take shape. Israel’s national airlines announced it will not renew direct flights to Dublin, which were only launched last year. Irish officials have said its €15 billion sovereign investment fund would divest from six Israeli companies, the Irish Times reported.

Israeli flag

Israel’s trade deficit with Ireland was €4 billion in 2022. Israeli imports totaled €5 billion, seventh largest among trading partners, but less than a quarter of the U.K.-leading €29 billion and U.S. second-place €22 billion.

Just under 600 Israelis lived in Ireland in 2022, according to the Central Statistics Office. The same census return does not indicate the number of Palestinians, while 2016 data showed fewer than 200 Palestinians. There were fewer than 3,000 Jews living in Ireland in 2016 compared to more than 63,000 Muslims. These figures do not include Northern Ireland.

For more on how activists in Ireland are responding to the recognition, visit the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Ireland Israel Alliance.