Pro-Palestinian protestors in Dublin (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
When Micheál Martin visited Mount Scopus on the outskirts of Jerusalem two months ago, he struck a pessimistic tone. The Irish government’s deputy head had been taken there for a briefing by UN officials, who told him the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis in the first half of 2023 was two and a half times higher than in the same period last year. There has also been a marked increase in the demolition of Palestinian homes, officials told him, pointing to locations in the distance where Israeli settlers were building properties.
Martin, who by that time had met with the presidents of both Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, had two main objectives. The first was to reinvigorate the push for a two-state solution, which had stalled partly due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and partly due to the election of a hardline Israeli government in 2022. The second objective was almost as ambitious. Martin sought to convey the message that Ireland, contrary to common perception, was a friend of Israel. Dublin may speak louder than most in favour of Palestinian rights, but that doesn’t mean it is blind to Israel’s security needs, he argued.
The Israelis weren’t convinced. There were niceties and handshakes, but the Irish delegation was met with an undeniable coolness in Jerusalem. Israeli diplomatic officials repeatedly expressed frustration to Irish journalists that Dublin was far quicker to condemn the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) than those of Palestinian militants. “When Hamas kills Israelis, why are they not called terrorists in your newspapers?” one asked.
Before departing for Jordan, Martin attempted to put a positive spin on the visit, expressing hope that a plan to restore relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia may enable some progress on the Palestine question. Now, in the wake of Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack and the devastating IDF response that has left thousands dead in Gaza, that hope seems to have been misplaced. Not only is the two-state solution more distant than ever, but Irish-Israeli relations are at perhaps their lowest point in history — lower even than in 2010, when Dublin expelled an Israeli diplomat in response to Mossad agents using Irish passports during the assassination of a Hamas official in the UAE.
Since the start of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Ireland, along with a small number of EU countries, has been pushing for a ceasefire, instead of the “humanitarian pause” favoured by the EU as a whole. And as the death toll climbs, the Irish government’s rhetoric has gradually strengthened. Earlier this month, Varadkar said Israel’s response has gone beyond self-defence and “resembles something more approaching revenge”. The Taoiseach ducked the question of whether Israel is guilty of war crimes, but noted that “the targeting of civilians, collective punishment: these are breaches of humanitarian law whoever commits them”. Martin, who is Varadkar’s coalition partner, is usually more careful with his words, but even he has called Israel’s attacks “disproportionate” and “not necessary”.
At this autumn’s Fianna Fáil party conference, the Israeli ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich likely felt uncomfortable listening to Martin strongly criticise her government’s actions. (The Palestinian representative sat a few seats away.) In the same speech, Martin rejected calls from Sinn Féin to expel her. But his main rationale was that diplomatic channels must be kept open to negotiate the extraction of some 40 Irish passport-holders from Gaza. It’s a far cry from the warmth shown to the Israeli diplomatic corps in most other EU capitals. Israel’s foreign affairs minister Eli Cohen said, last month, that Erlich is “representing the State of Israel in one of the more challenging arenas for Israel in Europe”.
That relations between Ireland and Israel are so poor is perhaps surprising, given the two nations’ extensive historic links. Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog, was born in Belfast in 1918, to Ireland’s chief Rabbi, a vocal Irish nationalist and fluent Irish speaker. The current president, Isaac Herzog, is Chaim’s son. During Joe Biden’s visit last year, the two bonded over their shared Irish heritage.
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SubscribeThe long-standing Irish Jewish community – which made a very disproportionately positive contribution to Irish society – has been reduced to just 800 Irish citizens, thanks to the toxic antisemitism which prevails in Ireland. The majority of Jewish people in Ireland now are ex-pats working in the multinational and tech sectors, who generally get out as soon as they can. Most Irish people do not “support Palestine so passionately” of course: they know little and care less about the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. But Irish political life is full of posturing Toytown revolutionaries, straight out of the Students Union.
I was looking for a succint way of summarising Irish politics and your last sentence does it perfectly.
Sympathy for hamas is baffling and displays an incredible naivety. One would think that in such a history-focussed country that some would at least spend a few hours reading about the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam, but apparently not.
SF are anticipated to win the next election, and the number of their “Palestinian brothers and sisters” that will arrive is anybody’s guess. They have yet to grasp that to them they are merely kuffar.
There is not a ‘revolutionary bone’ in the irish ‘body politic’ as attested to (I would suggest) by the country being the ‘domicile of choice’ for so many global pharma / tech behemoths.
Speaking as an Irish catholic, there is a distasteful element to the Irish character that is a toxic mixture of self-pity, victimhood and virtue signalling
I live in Derry where ludicrous gable end murals celebrate alleged links between the “victimised “ Irish and Palestinians. You’re absolutely right about the toxic mixture: no matter what horrors the IRA committed and now Hamas, they cannot be condemned. There is always the moral relativism of “victimhood. “
I forgot to include cloying sentimentality
Naivety is an understatement. Recklessly ignorant would be more apt in this situation.
Yep; who can forget how, post Brexit vote, that twerp Varadkar had his 5 minutes of glory telling us how they were going to deal with us bla bla bla.
No doubt if Putin sent out a sub to put them in their place, they’d expect us or Uncle Joe to help them out.
I can’t forgive Blair for letting the murdering IRA b**tards off the hook while they make Human Rights claims against ex-soldiers ‘in the name of justice’. Simply nauseating.
Yes, and at the same time, paratroopers tend to make for heavy handed riot police.
Either way, wars rarely provide us with pure and perfect victors, or victims. I suppose socialism excuses monstrosity more effectively, to the point where one could accept an ally as heinous as Moamar Gaddafi, but it’s also true that even religious minorities have legitimate greivances if they’re taxed, but cant vote.
Insofar as Palestinian sympathies (and their usual comorbidity, antisemitism) exist in Ireland, yes, that’s incomprehensible to thinking people. But these sympathies exist to an alarming degree on the American and UK left, as well.
The Irish are merely parroting the beliefs of any “good” leftist in a wealthy, coastal US city, or in Paris, or London. And after all, these Lefty elites were the ones pushing remarkably naive immigration policies on their societies.
Those crowds that so resembled a brownshirt rally were for the most part the children of the middle to upper middle classes, alongside more recently arrived groups that have always wished harm upon Jews.
As an American, I don’t want supporters of Hamas even living in my country, let alone serving in the House of Representatives, nor do I want alleged “antifascists” running around doing things that are indisputably fascist.
Ideally, I’d like them deported, to the largest extent legally possible. Failing that, any assistance they provide or acts of crime they engage in should be prosecuted, or strongly punished.
The rest of the Anglosphere should do the same.
“As an American, I don’t want supporters of Hamas even living in my country, let alone serving in the House of Representatives, nor do I want alleged “antifascists” running around doing things that are indisputably fascist.”
Unfortunately, you have exactly that! Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, both of whom have been formally admonished, but are still around, Jamaal Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez, and several others. Even more unfortunately, the United States is also not alone, and all Western democracies seem to be afflicted with the same problems.
Cultural suicide is the only explanation.
You live in a democracy, you don’t get to choose who other people vote to represent them. You make your choice and hope you’re in the majority
Varadkar is the most pro Israel and rule of law and least anti Brexit Irish political leader we have in Ireland.
Always baffles me how he gets such hate from the NI Unionists and UK. We have other politicians openly calling in the Dáil what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide.
Thank you, Stephen. It confirms what Tuvia Tenenbom wrote in his opening chapters of “The Taming of the Jew”, which described the author’s tour round Ireland and Britain in 2018-19. The picture Tenenbom painted was of two societies riddled with antisemitism, cloaked in a tender-hearted concern for Palestine (about which nearly everyone knows little and cares less).
…Well exactly! This meandering, long-winded article posing as nuance is pointless. Small town peasants all over Europe were the most enthusiastic anti-Semites.
You only have to look the video of David Norris demanding of the Israeli ambassador that Israel “talk to Hamas”.
While there had been some restrictions on Jews in the early Middle Ages (they varied across Europe), Antisemitism began to flourish in Europe with the Crusades (to liberate the Holy Land from Islam); if the crusaders were fighting an enemy abroad, then fighting the nonbelievers at home seemed `logical’.
Now we invite our (former) enemies in.
800? The article indicates that Ireland’s Jewish population is close to 3,000
The author puts the Jewish population of Britain at 30,000 when he writes that the number of Irish Jews, less than 3000, is a tenth of the British population of Jews. He is out by a factor of ten.
277,653 (2021 Census) for English and Welsh Jews, 2021 Northern Irish Census for Northern Irish Jews, and (2011 Census) for Scottish Jews; does not include smaller populations in Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies
Core Jewish population (2018):
290,000[1] – Source Wikipedia.
I think he meant a tenth when talking about head per capita
As a small, democratic nation with no real military power, Ireland is very invested in maintaining a rules-based international order, as opposed to a more muscular geopolitics.
Demonstrate your investment in a rules-based international order by supporting a gangster terrorist regime who just sucker-punched their neighbor!
Ah, I see that this leapt out at you as well!
Not knowing much about the politics, maybe England should apply similar “rules” to the Irish as the Arabs have towards the state of Israel.
If Britain acted like Israel during the Troubles they would have carpet bombed the Republican areas of Belfast
Thankfully the IRA only occasionally acted like Hamas.
I daresay that an equivalent massacre (say 10,000 dead civilians) would have brought an equivalent response.
That’s a thought provoking comparison, but I don’t think it’s valid. Firstly, it’s the unionists in NI whose history is similar to the Palestinians (ie arabs) in that they are the descendants of people introduced by an imperial power generations ago. Secondly, the IRA, although undoubtedly terrorists, had a limited objective of removing NI from the UK and uniting it with the republic. Hamas want to destroy Israel completely and kill or expel all its people.
Kill, not expel, it’s in their founding. Then they want to kill Jews everywhere, also in their founding charter.
“Ireland is very invested in maintaining a rules-based international order” – the right to defend your nation against terrorists is rules based. In this case devastating Hamas is the only medium term solution.
Personally I pay no attention to the whittering of Ireland – I seldom agree with them on anything and they are inconsequential on the world stage. In fact, could they just shut up?
There are 272,000 British Jews in GB, quick correction. As for Irish anti-Israel sentiment which bleeds into anti-Jewish sentiment, I must confess that I don’t feel warm and fuzzy feeling towards Ireland for this very reason. It seems that no one in Ireland has opened a history book. The Jews are from Judea, where the Judean mountains runs along the spine of Israel, where the tribe of Judah had its tribal allotment. The Jews are the native people of the Holy Land. The ‘Philistines’ came from the Greek Isles, originally; these modern ‘Palestinians’ have no relation to them at all. They are Persian, Turkish, Syrian, ,and Arabian, mostly. — My feelings towards Ireland are a mixture of contempt for their ignorance and coolness for their choosing the side that blows up busses, that beheads babies and burns them in ovens, that shoots unarmed civilians in the back. But I guess that like attracts like here. The Irish feel fondly towards people who are just like them.
It’s also drummed into their heads (anti semitism) from an early age – same here in Spain which makes no effort to hide its anti semitism
Didn’t the Jews come from Egypt originally? Led by Moses across the (parted) Red Sea etc? Into a land of ‘milk and honey’, which rather indicates people were farming there already. Or have I got my very hazy memories of bible stuff wrong?
No, according to the biblical account ‘the Israelites’ were ‘in exile’ in Egypt, eventually becoming slaves before Moses led them back to the River Jordan ie the boundary of ‘the Promised Land’.
What was it Golda Meir used to say? “Moses carried us Israelites through the desert for 40 years , to settle in the one spot in the Middle East which has no oil” Gotta love the Jewish sense of humour!
Your argument is confused. DNA shows most of the people of that region have ancestry there for thousands of years, which is actually a very common situation including in Britain. Most of the Palestinians are descended from those Ancient Jews, Canaanites, Philistines et al. Some people change religion – who knew? Quite evidently there could not be a Muslim presence in the region before the advent of Islam, and even the Jews had ancestors before they developed their own clear religious based identity, which is what it was.
The modern Ashkenazi derived Jews population of the region has of course at least as much “foreign blood”, notably European, as the Palestinian Arabs, while the Sephardis are racially almost indistinguishable from the Arab Muslims.
The Jews are not in simple – if any – terms a “race”. This term is itself fuzzy scientifically when applied to human beings and often dubiously used for political purposes.
None of this means I believe that Israel should not exist – it should – but this claim should not be based on an extremely dubious racial nationalism.
Wow. Pseudo-history topped off with a dollop of pure poison. Tasty stuff.
UK Jewish population is about 300,000.
If a journalist cannot get simple figures right then the article loses a lot of credibility.
Well spotted but presumably, the 3,000 Irish population is correct? I am a Jew but was/am unaware.
I wondered about that. 30,000 did seem a very low number for British Jews.
We might see it whittled down to that or lower, if we don’t get a handle on the antisemitism that is playing out in cities like London. You can get cautioned and threatened by the MET for yelling at the pro-Palestinian protesters (agitators) that “Hamas are terrorist” but drive past a synagogue as it lets out on the Sabbath shouting “death to Jews” and crickets.
Maths has never been my thing but wouldn’t it be the same in percentage terms then for both countries? 0.5% / 0.6%
If there are 3000 Jewish people in Ireland then that’s 0.06% of the population rather than 0.5% for UK. Maybe that’s what the author meant.
The simple fact is the Roman Catholic Church has historically been pretty much the most anti-semitic of all the Christian faiths (and that’s a high bar). This has pervaded Irish society even now, though apologists dress it up as some kind of morality.
Potentially a mea culpa in that I may have misread the post with Irish stats / numbers.
As for the ready I’m not about to defend religion of any variety but I would say though that it was an Irish version of said Roman Catholic Church. A version that had a uniquely ‘Victorian’ take on morality.
Personally I couldn’t get out of Ireland fast enough back in the day.
Ireland has pretty much binned ‘Roman Catholicism’ now and embraced ‘Progressive Theology’.
I struggle to decide which is worse!!
I think time will show the Progressive Theology is worse. At least with the RC you could ask for and receive forgiveness. There is no forgiveness with the Progressives, it is a nihilistic faith.
It’s nothing to do with the catholic church. The catholic church is a spent force in Ireland.
It’s all to do with identifying the Palestinians with the Republican population of NI, and the Israelis with the British state. That’s always what it’s been.
I’ll take it that you’ve never made a typo then?
3000 would be a hundredth of the UK’s figure. That’s more than a typo.
Sorry, daft remark! It could be a typo! A missing zero! A typo in a play could be inconsequential, while exactly the same typo extremely consequential within nuclear reactor instructions or a peace treaty. A typo nonetheless. Hopefully though there are much more robust methods of eliminating them in the last two categories.
The number screamed at me from the page, and should have done so at whomever proofread the piece. Unless, as is often the case nowadays, nobody did that….
Such a howler. So glad you flagged it – probably much much more considering secular Jews and modifications of surnames et.
James Joyce used to write about the disease of anti-Semitism in Irish Roman Catholic culture. This element is equally a nuisance as the English revolutionary socialists (SWP), stirring up animosity towards ethnic groups.
Gosh! You must be one of the few people to have read Ulysses then!!
Bravo!!!
My mother famously had it on the bookshelf for most of her life but never got past page 20.
Too cruel.
Who can ever forget Joyce’s description of his ‘squeeze’, one Nora Barnacle as “my little brown ars*d f*ck fairy”?
G Orwell stated the Irish working class were often anti- semitic.
Everything I read about Ireland these days describes a nation in free-fall. A deracinated, Ero-trash wanna-be. An ex-nation.
“This is exactly what the people of Ireland did in 1998, when they voted by an overwhelming majority to renounce any constitutional claim to Northern Ireland.” With their collective fingers crossed behind their collective back of course. Knowing that SF would continue to agitate for that anyway.
Israel has tried the land for peace thing several times and it hasn’t worked. They won’t try it again.
And the two-state solution didn’t stall simply because Netanyahu got reelected. It should be perfectly clear to everyone that Hamas doesn’t want it either.
What the acceptance of the British-Irish Agreement in 1998 did was to modify the previous constitutional claim, not renounce it. It did accept the principle of consent of the majority in Northern Ireland, but it did so in the knowledge that demographic factors were slowly moving in that direction anyway. If Irish diplomats are touting the line that Ireland did this, they are not telling to whole truth. But then what do tax payers in any country pay their diplomats to do?
That Ireland remained “neutral” in WW2 is to the everlasting shame of the Irish people. There is no reasonable, principled or otherwise plausible “explanation/excuse” for that grave mistake.
Spain and Portugal remained neutral too. But of course, they had nazi sympathies.
Maybe, no but?
So did Switzerland and Sweden. Anyone care to shed light on that?
They both did exceedingly well out of WWII it must be said.
Off course they are also ‘first cousins’ to the Germans anyway, so case explained.
An estimated 50,000 Irishmen and women from the 26 counties fought for the UK in WW2.
DeValera could never publicly support the British as Republicans generally would never have stood for it but he knew that if Hitler had taken the UK he was unlikely to stop there and secretly gave more support to Churchill than was ever made public. The real disgrace is that those brave men and women were never recognised for their bravery by the Irish government as they didn’t wish to admit any Irish helped the Brits for political reasons.
This article makes a giant leap of faith that the people of Ireland are closely aligned with their oddball politicians. I don’t find that to be the case.
My daughter is studying at UCD in Dublin, and my husband and I will be visiting her this week. I agree with you that the people are far more sensible than their politicians who supposedly represent them. In any case, I shan’t keep my mouth shut if I encounter any antisemitic outbursts. I come from a family of outspoken individuals, and I seem to have inherited that particular trait.
I have a couple of problems with this article, though I agree with the central thesis therein. First of all, the Central Statistics Office in Ireland only recognises “Jewish” as a religion rather than an ethnicity. The Institute of Jewish Policy Research estimate the number of Jews in Ireland (defined by the law of return) at 5,400 (see: https://www.jpr.org.uk/countries/how-many-jews-in-ireland ). It’s still very small as the presence of Jews in Ireland is historically very small, which is why Joyce gave Leopold Bloom the place he has in Ulysses. In terms of Catholic antisemitism, the two most notorious figures are Father John Creagh, a Redemptorist, who stoked up the “Limerick pogrom” early in the twentieth century (Creagh was mad and encouraged to do so by Limerick businessmen feeling pressure from competition by Jewish tradesmen who were arriving in the city in the late 19th/early 20th century) and the far more sinister Father Denis Fahey, a Holy Ghost missionary who arrived back in Ireland from France following formative study at the height of the Dreyfussard crisis. Yet Dublin, Belfast and Cork have each had Jewish Lords Mayor and I remember a time when each major political party (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour) had a sitting Jewish deputy in the Dáil. Indeed, Éamon de Valera allowed one of his supporters, Bob Briscoe, leave of absence (despite being a sitting TD) to support the struggle for independence in the Palestinian Mandate. However, there is one point that the writer misses, and I am surprised at someone who writes extensively on Irish defence policy (or lack thereof – another point I agree with him on) omitting this. The Irish Army has had a mandate in South Lebanon as part of UNIFIL and there is a huge turnover of Irish troops who have served there. These do not return to Ireland with a high opinion of Israel (and I gather that Israeli conscripts serving in Northern Israel have a similar attitude to Irish military personnel). I think more analysis of this and less of fringe politics or eccentric history would give us a clearer picture
It’s simpler than that. The I r ish state always had truck with Nazis and refused to help fleeing Jews.
Since Hamas claim to be the legitimate governors of Gaza, and Ireland labels Hamas as a terrorist organisation, that would surely make Israel’s hunting of Hamas a reasonable goal. They are NOT breaching the international rules of war. Hamas is responsible for safeguarding its own civilian population, while the Israelis are responsible for taking reasonable steps to minimise civilian casualties. Giving civilians daily warnings and opportunities to escape the worst of the fighting is way more generous than ‘reasonable’!
It seems to me the Irish government wants to proscribe Hamas yet protect it at the same time. Clearly any with the little people!
What Phillip Patrick says about Celtic in the Spectator is a better description of Ireland’s attitude than this high falutin’ posturing.
“But that narrative has less resonance today than it did in 1888. Celtic are a global corporate enterprise now a long way from their humble charitable, outsider roots and their foundation by Brother Walfrid, a tireless campaigner for the poor. Which makes association with the Palestine cause, at least as understood by the Green Brigade (Nir Bitton, an Israeli midfielder who played for the club between 2013 and 2022, called the fans ‘brainwashed’ with ‘zero clue about this conflict’) attractive. By importing and adopting what they imagine to be something similar to their club’s origin story, they can carry on the great struggle by proxy and keep imbibing the moral intoxicant of defiant righteousness.”
Let’s not gloss over this statement:
“after Hitler took power, Dublin refused to admit refugees fleeing Germany, with one Irish official stating they had “to some extent… brought the trouble [on] themselves”. And then there was de Valera’s extraordinary ill-judged visit to the German legation to pay his condolences on Hitler’s death”
p.s. Biden’s surname is English. His father’s heritage is southern England.
America subscribes to the one drop rule, apparently it works for your Irish ancestry too.
Plastic Paddies in Boston raising funds for the IRA while remaining safe and cosy away from the carnage the bombs bought with their money would cause.
James Joyce famously left Ireland in disgust at its Philistine establishment and interestingly the Dublin character he made most likeable was Bloom a Dublin Jew.
I don’t see the difference between “Just stop oil” and “Just stop war“.
Just do it and proudly count the dead bodies
I really doubt the average Irish folk feel this way. At the present time in our history, words are the main weapon, and those who control the words are now winning. Truth and facts have absolutely nothing to do with it.
The Irish hide behind the British and US military, while pretending that they are an independent country. Who cares what they think?
My God, the simplistic stereotyping in the comments section have reached a new low. It can be summarised (as one did) in the phrase ‘the bloody Irish’. Could we try a bit harder please, as the level of insight could be summed up as a verbal equivalent of those beer-bellied counter protesters in London this weekend just gone.
The Irish have known occupation and also know what it is to be treated as second class citizens in their own country. This may be one of the reasons for a pro-Palestinian stance. It must also be said that the the world, not just Ireland, is aghast at the scale of brutality. Over 4,000 children dead in a month and I don’t detect the slightest concern in here, certainly not in this string. It seems to be much easier to throw out the old canard of anti-semitism to deflect from the inhumanity of what is happening and to paint the powerful as the victim. Shame.
In one paragraph you write “the simplistic stereotyping in the comments section have reached a new low”, followed by “the level of insight could be summed up as a verbal equivalent of those beer-bellied counter protesters in London this weekend”. You criticise stereotyping and then do it.
You may need to look up stereotyping.
It’s the unherd herd mentality.
If you want to be petted, there are other sites for that. Here, besides a kick in the ass, there is hardly anything waiting for you.
A triumphant cry into the phone taken from the woman he killed, “Mum, I just killed 10 Jews,” is not what one would expect from an Englishman or an Irishman even in the most difficult moments of the Anglo-Irish conflict. You are dealing with a different mentality and are completely unable to understand its essence.
Selective highlighting of atrocities… Personally I would prefer a 2,000 bomb to take me out, as opposed to a knife in the throat, but I see no moral superiority in the actions of either side in this conflict.
The Israeli state is based on the IRA then. That explains their behaviour
Israel is at war with Ireland. In the last month, the IDF has repeatedly bombed the Irish Army personnel, as such, who are serving as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. And Irish nationals remain specifically excluded from the list of those allowed to leave Gaza, the only European nationality to be so treated. Tell yourself that Celtic and Liverpool fans do not know what they are talking about, although people who can lay their hands on a PFLP flag have nothing if not a more than average level of engagement. But American Democrats, and their wannabes from Canberra to Camden, get out of the fact that Israel is at war with Ireland.
They’re not doing a very good job of ‘peacekeeping’ then, are they?
You’re now literally just copying and pasting your previous comments which have already been debunked by contributors here.
I wonder if this chap is Liam’s sock puppet? A little while ago, we had a poster who went about insulting everybody, and posting the silliest and most outlandish things. I suspected him to be a troll, because every forum seems to have at least one, and now I wonder if this poster is a new incarnation of “Liam” whose surname I cannot remember.
Celtic and Liverpool fans do not know what they’re talking about.
You sound like David Aaronovitch. “Only North Londoners understand these things.”
I would have thought that Everton was Merseyside’s answer to Celtic and Liverpool were more in line with Rangers
Let me clarify something. Where the peacekeepers stand, Hezbollah should not be at all. And the weapons that Hezbollah fires at Israel should not be either. That’s why peacekeepers are there. And Hezbollah stands there. So who is Israel fighting there?