Is Ireland still the land of a hundred thousand welcomes?

Screenshot from – No More Blooms Ireland’s Attitude to the Jewish Refugee Problem:1933 – 1946 

Céad míle fáilte! (Kay-od mee-leh foyle-cha!) translated means, A hundred thousand welcomes! But if you are ethnically Jewish, an Israeli citizen, or a pro-Israel Irish citizen – perhaps that “welcome” doesn’t extend to you…

In the late 19th Century, after the Russian pogroms, many Jews fled west, some landing in Ireland.

“Jews were the most visible immigrant group in Ireland and its only sizeable non-Christian minority. Ireland’s Jewish population had increased from only 285 in 1871 to 5,148 in 1911, 2,665 of whom lived in Dublin….By the 1890s discourses about disease, immorality, peddling and moneylending were all linked with Jews in the popular mind. Jewish immigrants also competed for jobs and business with the native-born Irish, particularly in the furniture and tailoring trades, and were subject to hostility as a result.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jewish-fenians-and-anti-semites-the-jewish-role-in-the-irish-fight-for-freedom-1.4526074

After Ireland became a Republic – albeit with help from some Irish Jewish Republican-minded people and even a few Zionist organisations –  the Jewish population started its decline. Today Jews in Ireland, both citizens and migrants, number a mere couple of thousand.

Jews are not even referenced as being worthy of reporting in the 2022 Central Statistics Office report, it appears. I wonder how and why that non-tabulation absence came about? Someone should posit that pertinent question to government officials.

Census 2022 Figure 5.3 Population usually resident and present in the State by religion and citizenship

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpp5/census2022profile5-diversitymigrationethnicityirishtravellersreligion/religion/

Ireland’s Toxic Post-October 7th era.

The Gaza narrative rules supreme now in Ireland. As in most of the world now, Jewish people are unkindly and inaccurately tagged as “Zionist”…verbally spat at, demonised, cancelled and physically attacked.

As Times of Israel readers will know, Ireland sees itself cast as the “heroic” slingshot “David” against the supposed-military might of Israel / “Goliath”. How Torah-ironic is that?

Earlier this year the Irish government (along with Spain) – “recognised the state of Palestine” – and more recently, under the insidious influence of BDS, trying to pass punitive, apartheid-like legislation against trade with Israel.

The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 would ban and criminalize “trade with and economic support for illegal settlements in territories deemed occupied under international law“, most notably Israeli settlements in Israeli-occupied territories. Violators would face fines of up to €250,000 and up to five years in prison.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Territories_Bill

Like the rest of the world, we also have the propagandist pro-Palestinian marches; the political “invasions” of shops “daring” to sell Israeli products; the spraying of sly slogans and the tearing down of discreet posters publicising the Israeli and American hostages in Gaza. We also have much syntax-deficient, megaphone-screamed antisemitism coming from firebrand, socialist government members, at Gaza public protest meetings in Dublin.

“ That a state (Israel) is capable of doing this (the Gaza war) – is a psychopath. A state that is capable of doing this is a criminal.  It is a barbarian. It is a mass murderer. And to talk of peace, you can only make peace with human beings. With people who have some humanity.  You cannot make peace with a psychopath. With a mass murderer. With a savage.

And that is what the state of Israel is. …Israel is the monster created by the United States and Britain before them. They are capable of any atrocity, any savagery….The only thing you can do with a state like this is resist it  and bring it down. …” Richard Boyd Barrett, December 2nd, 2023

https://x.com/danielsrosehill/status/1731072971886727192

What Israeli, Jew or Philosemite would dare peer over the parapets after such febrile fomenting? Who would, “dare to be a Daniel” – to quote the popular evangelical childrens chorus?

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known.

WW2 Refugees Refused Entry into Ireland.

Back to the future in Ireland – with some prescient Irish political observations. During WW2, the Republic of Ireland proclaimed itself politically “neutral” and did indeed positively help Britain in various ways. At the same time various Irish officials also retained some semi-secret sympathy for Nazi Germany. For instance, the Irish government made no comment about Kristellnacht after that “starting-gun” set-off much anti-Semitism across Europe.

Screenshot from – No More Blooms Ireland’s Attitude to the Jewish Refugee Problem:1933 – 1946 

Chaim Herzog formally alerted Irish President De Valera regularly – to the horrors of the holocaust from late 1942 onwards…to no significant effect. Herzog’s father, a fluent Irish speaker, was known as “the Sinn Féin Rabbi” – for his support of the First Dáil and the Irish republican cause, during the Irish War of Independence.

In the UK, the WW2 Jewish refugee intake was circa 40,000; in stark contrast to the Irish intake of a mere circa 40 Jewish refugee intake. And even at that cruelly small number, the crucial criteria of those few Jews was their having to bring capital and business plans for employing Irish workers.

Clonan Castle in Westmeath was purchased by a UK Jewish society, to house 100 Polish Jewish orphans (aged 7 – 16) – but the Irish Minister of Justice, Gerry Boland, refused permission for that scheme. Did the Department of Justice issue a detailed explanation of policies that let Jews die rather than allow them into holy Catholic Ireland?

Even the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bob Briscoe, failed to secure visas for many German Jews,  including his aunt Hedwig and her daughter who were in Berlin. Hedwig died in Auschwitz along with 150 other members of Briscoe’s extended family.

Is Racism Woven into the Fabric of Irish Consciousness?

“There is some reason to believe that racism, including its anti-Semitic variant, was well-enough woven into the fabric of Irish consciousness to have sustained a Nazi presence here, had conditions facilitated its emergence”. Eamonn McCann, Irish author and socialist activist

https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/the-stuart-of-christendom-416469

In October 1997, Channel Four TV made a programme about Irish novelist Francis Stuart, who broadcast propaganda from Nazi Germany. He told the interviewer: ‘The Jew was always the worm that got into the rose and sickened it. Yes, but of course I take that as praise. I mean all those so-called healthy roses, they need exposing – many of them are sick.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n01/colm-toibin/issues-of-truth-and-invention

“Irish people still have this ambivalent attitude towards the Jewish congregation,” believes Louis Lentin. “They’re not really accepted as being Irish. It’s asked how can you be both Irish and Jewish, but never how can you be both Irish and American? I’m an Irishman first and Jewish by belief. But there is still that attitude here. A lot of Jews kept their heads down and said let’s not make too much noise. Because there is that feeling that you’re a guest. I don’t feel that, but many Jews I know do.”

– Louis Lentin (theatre, film and television director)

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/we-too-closed-the-door-1.134821

No More Blooms Ireland’s Attitude to the Jewish Refugee Problem:1933 – 1946 directed by Louis Lentin.