Israel closing their embassy in Dublin *Read OP for Mod Warning added 19/12/24*

You could even say that Israel are doing an 'Enoch'.

Yes, Ireland and early Israel had deep connections, Hergzog being one (who was a fluent Irish speaking chief rabbi of Israel whose son, who was Irish later became Israel's president), others being IRA members training Irgun terrorists in guerilla warfare, Irgun adopting monikers of flying columns and being greatly influenced by the republican struggle. This was all years ago of course.

Irish Jews have been consistently elected to dail eireann, despite Jewish populations rarely exceeding 3 or 4 thousand, have been ministers and mayors etc, which means they weren't purely voted in by Jews but had a trust of the general Irish populace.

All these accusations against us are surface level, lazy and don't hold up to any scrutiny. I would be extremely cynical of anybody who would try to promote them.

You make it sound like Israel is the plucky underdog of the region here when it is armed to the absolute teeth with the finest weaponry in the world and under the protection of the most powerful military superpower in history, and others.

And let's remember that it's Gaza they have flattened. If we are going to say "remember Israel is surrounded by hostiles", it seems odd not to also acknowledge that Gaza is surrounded by Israel and completely at its mercy. The destruction that Israel is visiting upon this surrounded patch of land seems to oddly echo the very fear of being surrounded that the Israelis apparently hold and which should apparently be a basis for understanding why Israel does what it does.

The big difference of course is that Israel has a mechanised army to defend itself with and the support of powerful allies, and Gaza has little more than moral support and nothing that can meaningfully repel the Israeli assault.

As for this "Israel is the most democratic country in the region" stuff, it's not Israel's democracy or social liberalism that people oppose, it's the apparent insinuation that these characteristics can be taken as justifying any action Israel takes against allegedly less enlightened people.

That's not a reply…..My point stands, and is true…you need to do better here

These people wouldn't be against apartheid in SA though for the reasons it was happening far away and wouldn't be a benefit for us financially. The exact same reasons why we should not criticise Israel.

Are you actually mad or maybe the Israeli foreign Minister?

The amount of israeli's killed over the last year is a tiny fraction of the number of other nationalities being killed in the ME, how is any other Country in the ME carrying out a genocide on Israel?

Not to mention that Ireland was one of the only countries in the 1930s to have specially put a recognition of the Jewish communities directly into the constitution, which was very much done with a sense that there was obvious and rising antisemitism in Europe at the time.

Dev was certainly weird at times, and that visit to the German ambassador was very inappropriate but it’s absolutely nuts to claim Ireland was somehow some centre of antisemitism by plucking out a few random missteps by someone born in the 1880s, while ignoring the fact that a large aspect of continental Europe literally took active part in the holocaust, yet apparently were now worse than Hitler?! It just makes absolutely no sense. There were also fascist movements and a lot of antisemitism all over the world at that time - it bubbled up in the UK and the US and plenty of other places that were on the allied side of the war. They didn’t take hold, thankfully, but they were absolutely there and they still flow though the extreme right.

If you go back to 1936 Jewish communities, Irish dock workers and English leftists and many others stood together against fascism. The Battle of Cable Street where Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists attempted to march through the East End (protected by police) was a huge example of this.

What’s going on at the moment is throwing slurs and attempting to tarnish. Some of it straying into hibernophobia, anti-Irish racism that belongs in far right British history. It’s disappointing to see anyone regurgitating that stuff.

It’s also mind boggling to see the Israeli government aligning itself more and more with far right movements, in the US and elsewhere. These are movements that were and often still are very openly antisemitic and violently so in many cases.

Ireland, Spain, Norway, the ICC, and many, many people (including numerous prominent Jewish figures btw) all over Europe, all over the US and around the world, many of whom are left of centre for, and who take the universal human rights and rule of law in conflict situations very seriously are simply holding up a mirror. If the reflection isn’t a pretty picture you can’t blame the mirror.

This is true and we do rightly call out international war crimes against other countries, we're much louder calling out Israel than we are any other nation though

Untill there is a two state solution we should not recognise any state there. Not equitable and will always be trouble if just one nation have a state.

Didn't the Israelis use forged Irish Passports some years back to carry out more murders. A horrible state.

We're not louder. Israel gets more publicity. And it's more contentious. Calling out the junta in myanmar is something everyone does. It's not controversial. Israel is reported on every day in the media and has been since the Hamas attacks. And that's not just Ireland.

as Devalera (awfully) sent a condolence letter to Hitler

I see this continually getting bandied about and it isn't true.

Eamon De Valera and Joe Walsh paid a visit to the German ambassador, Eduard Hempel, on the 2nd of May. He did so as a matter of diplomatic courtesy. De Valera had tried to maintain a good relationship with all the ambassadors of the nations who had residences here, including the ones who despised him, like the US ambassador, David Gray.

While De Valera was with Hempel he offered condolences on the death of Germany's head of state and wished Hempel & his family his best, as he knew it was the complete end for Hempel and his country and was going to involve a lot of hardship for its people in the coming years. But his condolence was really for Hempel who he believed was a decent figure and who carried out his ambassadorship in a professional manner.

Whether it can be seen as a diplomatic faux pas or not, De Valera was well aware of what would be made of his visit to Dr. Hempel by people who would seek to use cheap methods to undermine Ireland's position in the war. But he explained his reasoning for doing so later in a letter to Robert Brennan in the Irish Legation in Washington, "…to have failed to call upon the German representative would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr. Hempel himself. During the whole of the war, Dr. Hempel's conduct was irreproachable. He was always friendly and invariably correct - in a marked contrast with Gray. I was certainly not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat." He went on to say, "the formal acts of courtesy paid on such occasions as the death of a head of state should not have attached to them any further significance, such as connoting approval or disapproval of the policies of the State in question, or of its head."

De Valera had wanted to show all the major nations that Irish neutrality was serious and he did so because there were scurrilous accusations made by all sides about our neutrality during the whole of the war. He believed that by paying the standard visit to a sitting ambassador, it would show that Ireland was taking no sides.

Indeed, he had paid the same courtesy visit to David Gray upon the death of President Roosevelt, despite a mutual loathing of both himself and Grey. Gray snubbed him. In fact Gray had been very hostile to De Valera throughout his tenure, making untoward demands of a state which he had no right to do, such as demanding that Ireland dispel the German Legation in 1944 which De Valera flatly refused to do. And various British diplomats had made open threats to Ireland during the war, including mention of being able to "take her" any time they wished.

Not only did De Valera pay a visit to the US ambassador, he also presented a lengthy eulogy upon Roosevelt's death too stating that, "His death will bring the United States the sympathy of many millions of people throughout the world and, not least, the sympathy of Irishmen and women wherever they may be."

The day after Roosevelt's death on April 13th all Irish Government buildings flew their flags at half mast as a show of respect and there was special sitting in the Dail where De Valera gave a speech saying, "President Roosevelt will go down to history as one of the greatest of a long line of American presidents, with the unparalleled distinction of having been elected four times as head of the United States…Personally, I regard his death as a loss to the world; for I believe his whole career had shown that he could ultimately be depended upon when this war had ended, to throw his great influence behind, and devote his great energy to the establishment of a world organisation which would be just, and which, being just, could hope to save humanity from recurring calamities like the present war."

Even David Gray had to admit that "I thought I knew this country and its people but this was something new…there was a great deal of genuine feeling."

In any case, De Valera's courtesy visit to Eduard Hempel was, even at the time, a mere footnote in history. While it may have caused some minor ripples amongst staffers in diplomatic circles, the public barely even registered it on either side of the Atlantic or the Irish Sea. Much, much, bigger stories were going to be coming to light at the end of WWII.

It's only in recent times that this has been produced as some sort of gotcha and even still it remains a bit of a storm in a teacup as at the end of the day it really signifies nothing much at all. It certainly doesn't say anything about Irish attitudes to the Germans in WWII, nor does it have anything to say about Irish attitudes to anyone else either.

However, the stark contrast of De Valera's reaction to the death of FDR and his blithe, passing remark, of "condolence" to Eduard Hempel shows clearly where his real sympathies probably lay.

Understanding the motivations of why someone does something is a different thing from weighing up whether the manner in which they decide to exercise those motivations is right or wrong.

You want us to put ourselves in the shoes of Israelis? Fine. I understand the historical mistreatment of Jewish people, culminating in the Holocaust, which led them to seek to establish a sanctuary homeland and I understand the "never again" mentality that likely remains strong in the Jewish collective psyche and drives a sense of having to respond to perceived threats robustly. I understand that by and large they have built, by relative terms in the region, a liberal and progressive country with Western values and rule of law. I understand that they are surrounded by an Arab world that contains many fanatics of a backwards religion and where antisemitism (and I mean proper antisemitism) runs deep. I understand that there are many Palestinians and others in the Arab world who can never reconcile themselves to peaceful coexistence with Israel and would continue the fight against them by whatever means necessary and with ruthless barbarism like we saw on 7 October.

But despite understanding these realities, I still think what they have done to Gaza is barbarism too — and I don't just find it morally repulsive, but strategically they seem to be falling into the age old mistake of pursuing short term strategy (or just vengeance) at the expense making the world around them even more hostile for many decades to come. And once I've listed out how I understand the Israeli position and world view, what's left to pull me up on?

There’s also the fact that Israel is a developed, democratic country that is a member of all sorts of international bodies and treaties, including the ICC. It proclaims itself as part of a community of progressive, forward looking nations, so yes of course it gets held to higher standards than juntas and authoritarian dictatorships.

I think most people understand their position is extremely complex and challenging, but that isn’t an excuse to start dropping bombs on hospitals and apartment buildings. That’s something one normally associates with the likes of Russia —a country we are currently participating in massive economic and diplomatic sanctions against and are hosting over 100,000 refugees as a direct result of its actions.

You can’t do that and expect to be given a pat on the back and have nobody mention it at dinner parties…

I'm not sure if it's a childlike simplistic understanding you have of the situation or if it's something more worrying. Either way it's nonsensical. BTW in your obviously enlightened understanding how many of the massacred 45000 were terrorists, you said " many",how many?