January 28, 2024 - 8:00am
America and Ireland have always had a long and treasured history, but in recent months the mood has shifted. The reason for this can largely be reduced to one word: Gaza.
Since the Hamas attack on 7 October, America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel, has engaged in a brutal campaign that has alienated political leaders in Ireland. This week, Ireland’s longest-serving senator, David Norris, used his final speech in the Senate chamber to castigate Israel’s actions in Gaza. At the same time, Dublin’s City Council voted to raise the Palestinian flag above the building’s roof, while some Irish politicians have even endorsed an intifada.
All the while, a large portion of public anger has been directed at America. The mural of President Joe Biden erected when he visited his ancestral village of Ballina in County Mayo was defaced with blood recently, featuring the nickname “Genocide Joe”.
At a reception held at the US Ambassador’s residence in Dublin last month, protestors aggressively confronted Irish politicians as they left the house. Additionally, several politicians have called for the annual Shamrock festival at the White House to be boycotted. “The US is the number one supporter of what is happening in Palestine right now. Without US support, it could not be happening,” said People Before Profit’s Member of the Irish Parliament, or TD, Paul Murphy.
There are, however, some politicians who are being more careful. Former taoiseach Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald have refused to boycott the visit, with the latter saying, “You need to be very careful about any idea of boycotting: the Irish relationship with the United States is a very long-standing one, a very valuable one.”
That might be the understatement of the year. Sinn Féin has for decades been heavily reliant on the US for diplomatic pressure and funding. It was Bill Clinton who offered then Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams a visa to visit America in 1994, and it was the diaspora in America which provided funding to Sinn Féin’s armed wing, the provisional IRA, through bodies such as the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID).
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SubscribeFor years Ireland has been ruled by the whims of Catholic priests. Now the priests have faded away and the people have become rudderless. Time for the Imams to take over – in the nick of time to save some souls.
But its under different priesthood now, the scared order of Intersectionality!
Runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds. A shameless beneficiary of favours from all but a contributor of none – in short an ally of nothing and no-one but it’s own pleading reflection.
In short, a neutral country that has never engaged in foreign wars, and masters a foreign language well enough to avoid using it’s [sic] greengrocer’s apostrophes.
Ireland is not really a neutral country. It’s an unarmed non-combatant country.
The luxury of a free-rider peace dividend by dint only of being far from the madding lines of far-off lands. Struggling even to “do its bit” by welcoming a few migrants without rioting or shutting hotels.
Well thought through. Not dull at all.
Or, a not-all-non-neutral country quite prepared to pontificate without consequence – making matters worse for others doing the lifting among “the 27” (26) and NATO.
Irish people are a great deal more concerned about burgeoning hospital waiting lists, a housing and homelessness crisis, the highest cost of living in the EU, sclerotic transport infrastructure, a drugs and crime epidemic, and uncontrolled immigration, than they are about Gaza. Paul Murphy is the most extreme hard left TD out of 160 and is not remotely representative of most Irish voters. The Irish politician and media establishment obsess on Gaza to distract attention from the home grown problems which they have done so much to ferment.
Who cares anyway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dublin_riot
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rural-ireland-revolts-as-town-s-only-hotel-is-closed-to-accommodate-asylum-seekers/ar-AA1naamX
The Irish are not allowed to defend their own children, but they can speak out in defense of Hamas. I saw a tweet in which members of the Irish government urged the Irish to admit their white guilt as colonialists.
In principle, this is how the West lives now.
Murphy may not be elected next time. A large % of his voters are annoyed by the open borders policy he supports. Sinn Fein dropped 4 points in the latest poll for the very same reason
This is very true.
Why is Ireland’s “nightmare” beginning?
The Old Sod seemed to do a lot better during its “Celtic Tiger” years, when it offered lower levels of taxes, high rates of homeownership, and an oasis from Europe’s quasi-socialism.
No doubt Sinn Fein’s hard leftist politics and Corbynesque antisemitism are behind their support for Hamas’ butchery. But I can’t imagine why Israeli reprisals are in any way harming Irishmen, or creating a “nightmare.”
Irish political parties need to 1) convince Americans that they are all cutely Irish and just blameless innocents, and, 2) to stoke up resentment of the UK to boost politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The Ireland/Gaza vs UK/Israel narrative of oppression is just one cheap variant of this. But consider: as US nuclear weapons land in the UK (and Biden makes unacceptable forays into UK internal policy while refusing trade deals) Ireland sits aside, whistling into the wind about defence, tax, migration and the rest. European defence is beneath Ireland’s moral compass as it martials “history” as a glorious “opt out” – and seeks new partners (who in turn see it as a backdoor). Whilat the US gains a new Special Relatiionship, it is rapidly losing a far older one.
What does the nightmare look like?
The last sentence had the same effect as watching a boring TV show and then the volume comes up for the ads.
Ireland is the Canada of Europe, its not content to be a 2nd tier country that dose reasonable well at what it dose, its wants to be seen and noticed. So they concoct a smug yet false veneer of smug moral superiority that’s expressed though passive aggressive behavior, and have a massive inferiority complex towards their the country they have a border with, which they then pick fights or act contrarian towards it. But also do it under a false veneer niceness and trying to be helpful.
I dosed off reading that drivel. Dose it surprise you?
I got through the first run-on sentence, the missing apostrophe, the typo on ‘does’. Then he lost me on the missed adverb.
Is this a punctuation and spelling bee? Perhaps such petty-fugging underlines the article’s gist?
Did you omit to correct the wording above – of someone you agree with?
Matt, seriously? Dermot’s use of ‘dose’ as a mispelling in his first sentence and typo in his second didn’t clue you in to his use of irony?
Perhaps you should demote yourself to the YouTube comments section.
Ireland is a yesterday-country. Unsure of what they are or will be, they have thrown off the traditions of yesterday and now wander, directionless, through the paths of history.
Agree they are losing their way but don’t count the Irish people out yet. They survived 700 years of difficulties with the English and I sense a stirring in the people against the morons in Dublin. The winds finally are shifting.
I agree. The tides are shifting.
Tides, turn. sands shift – surely? C’mon Graham.
Matt, you have truly reached your nadir. ‘Tide shift’ is an established term, and differs subtly from the turning of the tides by its allusion to the role of external forces on the delta; whereas ‘turning’ is neutral with regard to causes. In thus deploying it, I made implicit reference to the ‘stirring’ Joe referred to in his comment.
I was educated in Ireland. You won’t out-pedant me, you silly Englishman.
Fascinating. And you reveal yourself slowly not only as a pedant, but a racist bigot too? Highly inadvisable to assume someone’s origin though, I might add, let alone to use it in argument.
I know, I know. But it’s more fun to call you a ‘silly Englishman’. Yanks are too easy to target.
That hardly excuses the comment. And I am not “a yank” either. But you’re forgiven! Consider me, if it helps, as also the great grandson of a famine emigrant from Kilrush, so a Birmingham catholic. And that’s just on one side. See my point? Biden leverages his ostensible Irishness, for votes, whereas others accept who they are now. He’s American. I’m English. And you, meanwhile, dislike us both for that I guess. Irish tolerance?
You sound just like the teacher in the classic “Roses are red” song:
Then perhaps you failed to notice where the pedagogy started in this spelling bee thread. Did you even read the comments above (assuming the article was too much to ask), before your cut ‘n paste? Or perhaps you just like the song? Thanks for sharing (it is actually funny). Chapin and Co.
Hmmm …. I think you have some poetic talent. There’s material there ….. 🙂
Having Ursula von der Leyen as their “replacement pope” will not end well for the Irish.
If Ireland were still a Catholic country, I would have little to fear for them. But they are nothing in particular right now, and ‘nature abhors a vacuum’.
So Ireland runs a “trade surplus with China”.
Yeah, really !
Largely based on industrialised tax avoidance schemes run for the benefit of huge US companies.
Not more of this “Global South” nonsense … there is no such coherent group. A few months ago, we were being told that Argentina was one of the leaders of this new “Global South” !
The irony of all this is palpable.
Ireland’s is a non-serious country when it comes to foreign policy. It refuses to have a proper army — free-riding on NATO and the UK. Its position on trendy left-wing causes is just so much virtue-signalling.
It models itself on an NGO and, in foreign policy terms, its leadership generally behaves like senior NGO staffers.
The good news is that the United States doesn’t take it seriously at all for these reasons. What exactly could Ireland do to harm or threaten American interests that wouldn’t be much worse for Ireland itself?