Thousands have marched in solidarity with Palestine following the conflict in Gaza, but Ireland’s support of the Palestinian cause was not always so straightforward. By Diarmuid Breatnach Palestinian flags fluttering at demonstrations and rallies across Ireland, passing drivers beeping their horns in solidarity; Israeli Ambassadors complaining and even criticising the President of the Irish State; Irish politicians, out of step with the US-led consensus, calling for an unconditional ceasefire while an extremist Israeli Minister calls for the wiping out of the Gaza Palestinians or their expulsion to Ireland. There is little doubt where lie the sympathies of the majority of the Irish public. When asked why this is, most people point to the long struggle of the Irish against invasion, occupation and sectarianism. But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, not so long ago, the Irish public was mostly pro-Israel. In the early decades of the Irish state, most people’s sympathy with Jews, because of their history of oppression and the horror of the Holocaust, transferred easily enough to the creation of the State of Israel. In addition, there were important Irish political and cultural connections with the new state and finally, Hollywood played an important part in the moulding of Irish public opinion. State Politics The 1937 Constitution established under De Valera specifically mentioned Judaism in Article 44.1 and protected it from persecution while he himself had good relations with the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Chaim Herzog, who had an important role in relation to the founding of Israel. Nevertheless, the Irish State was wary of granting recognition to Israel, conscious that Palestine had been an Arab colonial possession or ‘mandate’ of the UK, many of whose other possessions around the world were being de-colonised. Five years after the founding of Israel, the Irish State was hardly encouraged to recognise it following the attack on Egypt, along with imperialist France and the UK, following an Egyptian attempt to nationalise the Suez Canal. The US, keen to show that the balance of world power had changed since the Second World War, publicly condemned the attack, especially chastising the old colonial powers and previous world masters, the British and French. President Eisenhower refused to intervene in the foreign-exchange markets to defend the plummeting value of the pound and the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was forced to resign. Irish-language supporters and campaigners who wished to have the Irish language spoken throughout Ireland and not only in the Gaeltacht areas, admired the Israeli State for its achievement in restoring Hebrew as a daily-spoken language The Irish State of course had friendly relations with the US but the Israeli State had some important Irish connections too. The Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Yitzhak Herzog, was late of Belfast and Dublin, where he had also been Chief Rabbi of Ireland. One of his sons, Chaim Herzog, was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin, before becoming the sixth President of Israel. His own son serves as the current President. Robert Briscoe (1894-1967), an Irish Republican, former prominent IRA Volunteer, TD (1927-1961), and twice Lord Mayor of Dublin (1956/7, and 1961/2), not only supported the creation of the Israeli State but was a special adviser to Menachem Begin after the Second World War. He advised Begin in the transformation of the terrorist Irgun organisation into a parliamentary political movement in the form of Herut in the new Israeli state; the party later became Likud. Briscoe had also fundraised for the Irgun in the US (as he had for the IRA during the Irish War of Independence). Republican Politics During the 1960s there was a US and European fashion, especially among young middle-class students both Jewish and Gentile, of going to work in Israeli-dominated Palestine, in collectively-owned agricultural communities, known as kibbutzim. Also, Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land (holy to all three strands of the Abrahamic tradition: Christians, Jews and Muslims) went by permission of the Israeli State and had a very narrow and sanitised experience (if any at all) of what life was like there for the Palestinians. But by the late 1960s most left-wing thinking around Europe was clear that the Palestinians were oppressed and fighting a liberation struggle. Official Sinn Féin sent a delegate to conferences in Jordan and Kuwait in 1970/1. In 1970 an article in the party’s weekly United Irishman described Ireland, like Palestine, as engaged in a national liberation struggle. The Official IRA prisoners in Mountjoy Prison supported the Palestinians in their journal An Eochair in 1973 and Palestinians were among the guerrilla groups represented in the second Anti-Imperialist Festival organised by the Officials in July 1976. Nevertheless, the election manifesto of the Workers’ Party, successor to Official Sinn Féin, in 1983 accepted the recognition of the State of Israel, although that contradicted party policy and the involvement of its members in the Irish Friends of Palestine organisation, which was committed to supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). However, party policy was soon publicly and internally reoriented in solidarity with Palestine. Around this time, the British and Irish Communist Organisation, a small but influential organisation, had a pro-Israel position. However, it was reversed in the late 1980s, shortly before its demise. In the 1970s, Provisional Sinn Féin’s weekly newspaper An Phoblacht often featured articles sympathetic to the Irish struggle from a US-based correspondent signing himself as Fred Burns O’Brien, one of which was notably favourable in its reference to the Israeli state. However, once the Provisionals declared themselves to be in favour of socialism, they became pro-Palestinian and since the 1990s Palestinian representatives have attended Provisional Sinn Féin’s Ard-Fheiseanna (Annual Congresses), most recently when Palestinian ambassador to Ireland, Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, addressed the party’s gathering this month. In the early decades of the Irish State, most people’s sympathy with Jews, because of their history of oppression and the horror of the Holocaust, transferred easily enough to creation of the State of Israel The PLO, dominated by Yasser Arafat’s Al Fatah party, recognised the State of Israel
