Ireland’s elites have found their new religion: Hating Israel

For proof that antisemitism destroys everything it touches, look no further than the Republic of Ireland.

Once a famously friendly country, wishing "A hundred thousand welcomes" to every visitor, Ireland now seethes with Israelophobia.

What went wrong?

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The extent of Ireland’s fear and loathing of the Jewish state was apparent in its soccer clash against Israel on Sunday.

The two teams met as part of the UEFA Nations League. From the minute the fixture was announced, Ireland was gripped by rage. "Why would we want to play against those genocidal lunatics?" asked Dublin’s keffiyeh-adorned chattering class.

A Maoist fury descended on the Emerald Isle. A campaign was launched – "Stop The Game" – to try to save "our boys" from the shame of sharing a pitch with Israelis.

Sportspeople, politicians, the media and the Dublin left clubbed together to demand the match be called off. Irish soccer players should not be made to mingle with "genocidal murderers," they cried, conjuring up a demented vision of the boys in green being set upon by wild-eyed Israeli players.

At one point, the keffiyeh mob gathered outside the Dublin hotel the Irish soccer team was staying in, barking through megaphones for the game to be stopped.

In the end, it went ahead. For security reasons, it had to be played behind closed doors in a neutral country – Hungary.

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Yet even at the game, the Irish couldn’t resist landing a smug blow on Israel. The Irish players bowed their heads during the Israeli national anthem. They wore black arm bands for those killed in Israel’s "genocide."

Worse, they refused to shake the Israeli players’ hands, as if they were morally diseased; as if you might catch the genocide bug simply by touching those people. It was churlish, narcissistic and profoundly unsporting.

Ireland has been consumed, head to toe, by the anti-Israel frenzy. Hating Israel is now the moral glue of the cultural establishment. They define their "virtue" through their animus for the Jewish homeland. The more you hate Israel, the more virtuous you become.

The mania is everywhere. The media is obsessed with what it falsely calls Israel’s "war crimes."

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A recent analysis found that between January and May this year, four of Ireland’s main media outlets, including state broadcaster RTE, published 3,007 reports about "Israel-Palestine." That’s 20 a day. More than on any other topic.

The hate is rife in political circles, too. Politicians openly refer to the "disgusting Zionist regime."

The Irish government has even agitated for a watering down of the meaning of "genocide" in order that we might finally find Israel guilty of it. Shorter version: Let’s stitch up the Jews.

Ireland’s biggest cultural exports – from rap outfit Kneecap to bestselling author Sally Rooney – speak of little else besides Israel.

You can feel the anti-Israel animus everywhere. Not only in Dublin, Europe’s undisputed capital of Israelophobia. Also in the countryside. I was cycling in the West recently when I saw a Palestinian flag in a random field of sheep. Sheep for Palestine? How fitting.

Things got so bad that Israel took the extraordinary decision to shut its embassy in Dublin in 2024, citing Ireland’s "demonization of the Jewish state."

The Irish will say they are just "criticizing Israel." Surely no one’s buying this anymore? "Criticism of Israel" crosses the line into antisemitic bigotry when it becomes disproportionate and obsessive. When it promotes the great, toxic falsehood of our age – namely that Israel is a uniquely barbarous nation, not unlike the Nazis of the 1930s.

There are only around 3,000 Jews in Ireland. As for the Jewish state – it is 2,500 miles from Dublin, a distant nation over which the Irish have no influence whatsoever.

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So why have Ireland’s elites become so feverishly obsessed with that tiny country?

I think it stems from Ireland’s own moral disarray. Ever since the slow-motion collapse of the Catholic Church, Ireland has been on the hunt for a new system of morality, for a new narrative of good and evil.

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And it has found it in the Israel-Gaza crisis. Israel has become a kind of Satan substitute for post-Catholic Ireland, a demonic entity against which the Irish might measure their virtue.

Irishness is now defined almost entirely by its antipathy to Israel. Ed Sheeran, who calls himself "culturally Irish," found this out following the Macklemore scandal. Sheeran was virtually unpersoned in Ireland for failing to be sufficiently venomous about the Jewish state. He should "never feel welcome in Ireland ever again," fumed one columnist.

There you have it: to be Irish is to hate Israel. Antisemitism has always been an all-consuming mind virus, a blinding conspiracy theory where the Jews come to be seen as the source of every earthly ill. And right now, Ireland has got this virus bad.