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Sean Gannon is a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, specialising in the relationship between the two countries. He is currently preparing a book on this subject and writing the chapter on Ireland for a forthcoming study on the interplay between Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Europe since 9/11.
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By Sean Gannon
October 31, 2002
As Ireland takes pride in its reputation as one of the few nations never to have been infected with the virus of anti-Semitism, David Vance's caricaturing of the Republic as a hotbed of anti-Semitic intrigue has provoked a storm of righteous indignation. However, when the overstatements and errors are expunged from his argument, there remains an uncomfortable kernel of truth.
For Ireland's reputation is very much undeserved. Historically, anti-Semitism was as prevalent here as it was elsewhere in Europe, differing only in its emphasis on issues of religion rather than race. The Jews were seen as the enduring enemies of Christianity and the Irish Catholic Church published and preached every known calumny against them, from deicide and ritual murder to usury and 'Masonic-Communism.' Given the Church's all-pervading influence in 'the Pope's Green Island,' such attitudes were endemic in Irish political, educational and social life in the decades leading up to the establishment of Israel. The fact that there was no serious anti-Semitic violence in Ireland after 1904 had less to do with national virtue than with the fact that there were very few Jews to conduct violence against. And the Irish authorities were determined to keep it that way. Cognizant of the intensity of anti-Semitic feeling in the country, they implemented, throughout the decades of crisis in Europe, an immigration policy with the explicit aim of keeping out those with "non-Aryans affiliations."
With the foundation of Israel in 1948, this widespread ambivalence towards the Jews was quickly transferred to their new state. Much of the often virulent criticism directed at Israel by politicians, prelates and the public was blatantly anti-Semitic while government policy towards Jerusalem was dictated by the anti-Jewish Pope Pius XII. Indeed, it is fair to say that in Ireland in the years after 1948, anti-Zionism was, in effect, anti-Semitism.
However, as Catholic power waned, Irish anti-Zionism began to shed its theological baggage and became progressively preoccupied with the Arab question. In an era of de-colonization, Ireland began to identify increasingly with the refugees as victims of an 'imperialist enterprise' and, after 1967, this was easily transmuted into support for Palestinian 'national' demands. This led Ireland to adopt an increasingly critical position with regard to Israel in international forums, culminating in its becoming in 1980 the first EU country to recognize the PLO and a Palestinian "right to self-determination." The Irish experience of peace-keeping in Lebanon brought Irish-Israeli relations to their lowest point and by the time this source of tension was removed in the autumn of 2001, the so-called al-Aqsa Intifada was in full swing, providing a new focus for anti-Israel feeling.
But does the persistence of anti-Israel feelings in Ireland constitute anti-Semitism? Certainly, it seems at times as if the Irish will always find a stick with which to beat Israel. That Irish anti-Zionism sprang fully formed from the head of Catholic anti-Semitism in undeniable but over the years it succeeded, for the most part, in freeing itself from purely anti-Jewish prejudice. However, while it has been 30 years since the last significant anti-Semitic scandal, antipathy towards the Jews does still exist. The last major survey published in 1996 found declining yet significant levels of anti-Semitism, most notably in rural areas, and these do inform attitudes towards Israel today. The tone of some of the criticism leveled at Israel since September 2000 is clear evidence of this and it is doubtful whether the next survey will show a continued decline in anti-Jewish feeling.
However, residual anti-Semitism cannot explain the scale and intensity of anti-Israeli feeling in Ireland today. Mr. Vance's contention that Nationalist Ireland, as a "financial, logistical, moral and political" supporter of the IRA, almost instinctively backs the PLO is certainly broadly true of Northern Ireland where the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign seems little more than an arm of Sinn Fein and pro-Palestinian flags and murals adorn nationalist areas. But can the same be said of the South where the vast majority was appalled by the IRA's murderous campaign?
Though overstated, Mr. Vance's argument again contains an uncomfortable kernel of truth. He correctly identifies the nationalist reading of Irish history, which remains a potent force in the Republic, as the wellspring of anti-Israeli feeling but to focus solely on attitudes to Sinn Fein/IRA is mistaken. While Sinn Fein/IRA were, in the past, roundly denounced as besmirching the Irish nationalist ideal, the Northern Ireland peace process has undoubtedly brought with it a softening of attitudes towards them in the South and an unhealthy ambivalence regarding its continued military activities has unquestionably crept in. But this has had little effect on Irish attitudes towards Israel which were as trenchantly critical before the Belfast Agreement as they have been since. For it not with Gerry Adams and his associates that the majority in Ireland compare Yasser Arafat and his henchmen, but with those who fought for independence from Britain almost ninety years ago.
The fact is that, however mistakenly, great swathes of the Irish see the Palestinians as a colonized people, denied their right to nationhood by an 'imperialist' Israeli state, a situation they consider in every way analogous to that which existed in Ireland during the centuries of English rule. The parallels which Israelis have traditionally drawn between the 1948 War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish War 30 years earlier are dismissed in favor of an almost complete identification with what is seen as the Palestinian 'national struggle' against the vastly superior forces of a 'colonizer.' Given that the nationalist reading of Irish history, taught in all state schools, presents Irish freedom as achieved through a series of bloody rebellions against the Empire, a significant number maintain an atavistic admiration and respect for insurrection and see armed violence as a justifiable, even desirable form of protest against what they adjudge an occupation, regardless of the chances of success.
The Intifada, therefore, is considered wholly legitimate; Marwan Barghouti is seen as a Michael Collins-type hero, his Tanzim terrorists as 'freedom fighters.' The IDF play the role of the hated British army. Today, such perceptions lie at the heart of Irish hostility to Israel. When combined with both a residual and now growing anti-Semitism and an impossibly biased media, the result is a nationally unanimous view of the Middle East conflict, one based on an almost universal condemnation of Israel and unconditional support for the Palestinians. Theoretically then, a Palestinian state should assuage most of the anti-Israeli sentiment in Ireland today. But will Ireland feel better disposed towards Israel if this comes to pass? I, for one, doubt it but we shall have to wait and see.
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