Why Ireland is going to recognize a Palestinian state

When the Irish foreign minister Micheál Martin recently stood up and announced to the Dáil that Ireland would officially recognize a Palestinian state “within a matter of weeks,” there were no sharp intakes of breath or fits of fainting in the chamber.

Irish political parties have long been relatively united in their calls for full recognition of a Palestinian state. But this was the first time there had been an explicit statement of intent, and within a specific timeline.

Relations between Ireland and Israel have traditionally been poor since diplomatic ties were established in 1975. But events since October 7 (which many Irish politicians seem to have conveniently forgotten) have plunged those relations into freezing territory.

There have been repeated calls in the Dáil to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, and to permanently shutter the Israeli embassy, while also ceasing all diplomatic, official, cultural and economic relations. That isn’t just a boycott; it’s effectively a call for a complete blockade.

That some of the most strident voices on the Irish left had been making such utterances even before that awful day in October, which marked the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the end of the Holocaust, should come as no surprise.

Ireland is a cold house for Israeli Jews and this urge to recognize a Palestinian state is the latest way for the government to punish the Israelis — while also throwing some red meat to the more vociferous Israelophobes in the Irish political and media classes.

There has been little mention of October 7 in Ireland since the invasion of Gaza, and even less about the estimated 130 hostages who still languish in Hamas captivity.

It’s almost as if mentioning the hostages muddies a perfectly clear and easily understood storyline for the left — a story in which the evil, oppressive Israelis slaughter the peace-loving Palestinians. This is a hopelessly naive and historically illiterate way of seeing things, but many people in Ireland seem to see one of the world’s most intractable problems in this totally binary way. According to far-left TDs such as Richard Boyd Barrett and Paul Murphy, Israel is an “apartheid, genocidal state.” After all, everyone is against apartheid and genocide, aren’t they?

Last month, there were even calls for the then-Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, to boycott the annual, traditional St. Patrick’s Day trip to the White House, with Murphy demanding that “there should be no shamrock for Genocide Joe” in response to America’s support for Israel.

Boyd Barrett’s party colleague, Gino Kenny, has said that “we cannot treat Israel like a normal state. It subjects the Palestinian people to apartheid and is a state of racism.”

Even the more supposedly moderate left-wing parties have been eager to get a piece of the action.

Both Labour and the Social Democrats have been vociferous in their condemnation of Israel, with Labour’s Aodhan O’Riordain going so far as to claim that “it’s evil in our time, it’s a genocide on our watch.”

Of course, the only party in this conflict openly espousing the total, genocidal destruction of a people is actually Hamas. But this is either ignored or glossed over as Israeli propaganda.

Under these circumstances, it is hardly a surprise that minister Martin is now blatantly calling for the urgent recognition of a Palestinian state. This will inevitably attract support from the thousands of people who gather outside Dublin’s General Post Office every Saturday, chanting that loathsome ditty “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The fact that the chant itself appears to call for the destruction of Israel and a single Palestinian entity stretching from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean (which, of course, would be controlled by the gentle, peace-loving democrats of Hamas) seems to bother them not a jot.

These are dark days for Israel, and everyone wants to see an end to the bloodshed. But they are also dark days for western politics, Ireland included. When this horror finally ends, Israel will remember who its friends were. Assuming it still exists, of course. 

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.