When Ireland Became ‘Paddystine’
Degenerated by pro-Hamas support and putrid Jew-hate.
By Hugh Fitzgerald
The anti-Israel animus in Ireland keeps increasing in volume, promoted by those at the very top – the Taioseach Simon Harris, President Michael Higgins, and Foreign Minister Micheál Martin. More on how Ireland became “Paddystine” can be found here: “Welcome to ‘Paddystine,’” by Ben Cohen, JNS, December 22, 2024:
The other day, during a discussion with a colleague about the wave of pro-Hamas, antisemitic hysteria sweeping the Republic of Ireland, I unthinkingly quipped that the people of Eire should rename themselves “Paddystinians.” I immediately regretted doing so because the term “Paddy” is an aging pejorative, conjuring up images of Irish drunkenness, the supposed Irish proclivity for casual brawling, and ingrained Irish idiocy – stereotypes any decent person should reject.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.
A couple of days after that exchange, I discovered that the hashtag “#Paddystinian” was being eagerly adopted on social media by Irish supporters of Hamas. The accompanying posts were variously obnoxious or downright stupid, with many of those mocking the assertion that their country is antisemitic seemingly unaware of the immortal line spoken by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses that Ireland “has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews (sic)” because “she never let them in.” (There has, in fact, been a minuscule Jewish presence in Ireland for centuries, numbering the current president of Israel among its offspring, and there have been several episodes of antisemitism during that time, including the present, but Ireland is more or less an instance of the “antisemitism without Jews” phenomenon.)
One might say that Ireland is little different from the rest of Europe when it comes to the volume and the venom of its antisemitism: France, Germany and the United Kingdom, among others, are current examples of a similar trend. But Ireland stands out because of the role of its government in stoking these poisonous sentiments, as well as the fact that antisemitic depictions of Israel sit comfortably in its major political parties across the spectrum. That perhaps explains why Israel has closed its embassy in Dublin.
To my mind, the most grotesque offender in this regard is the Irish president, Michael Higgins. An 83-year-old poet who has carefully cultivated an avuncular image with his three-piece tweed suits and swept back, thinning white hair, Higgins’ high-handed manner is at its most infuriating when he articulates – as he has done on a few occasions since the Hamas atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – conspiracy theories about Israel that lean heavily on the theme of shadowy, unaccountable Jewish power. Earlier this year, for example, he blamed a covert Israeli intelligence operation for leaking his fawning letter of congratulations to the Iranian regime’s newly installed President Masoud Pezeshkian and was subsequently too pompous to issue an apology when it was pointed out that the Iranians themselves had publicized his message first. Then, last week, as he accepted the credentials of the new Palestinian ambassador in Dublin, he waxed lyrically about Israeli assaults on the sovereignty of three of its neighbors: Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, where the Israelis apparently “would like, in fact, actually to have a settlement.”
Higgins charged the Mossad for leaking his “fawning letter of congratulations” to Iran’s new president, but it was the Iranians themselves, not the Israelis, who had made his letter public. Informed of this, he did not admit to his mistake, much less apologize to the Israelis for his initial claim. Higgins also makes preposterous claims about Israeli expansionism. When he received the new ambassador of “Palestine,” he claimed that in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt Israel was aggressively assaulting those countries’ sovereignty, presumably meaning that the Zionists hope to enlarge Israel so that it extends “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” This is an old chestnut among the world’s antisemites.
In reality, the aggression is all coming from Hezbollah, and now many Lebanese, not just the Christians and Sunnis, but even many Shia, are tired of Hezbollah’s continuing war against Israel that has led to so much destruction, not only in southern Lebanon between the Litani River and the Israeli border, but elsewhere as well – especially in southern Beirut, most of which has been leveled by Israeli airstrikes. And Hezbollah has also been responsible for other destruction that did not involve Israel. Think of the “Beirut blast” of August 4, 2020, that resulted from Hezbollah’s faulty storage of ammonium nitrates in a hangar at the Port of Beirut. That huge explosion – the largest non-nuclear explosion in history – caused 218 deaths, 6000 wounded, and $15 billon in damages. Lebanon has only suffered from Hezbollah’s dominance, its killing of so many of its political enemies, including Rafik Hariri, Samir Kassir, George Hawi, Gebran Tueni, Pierre Amine Gemayel, and Walid Edo.