Ireland’s Righteous Criticisms Of Israel Aren’t Enough

A typical Irish person, presuming they have any sense, wouldn’t feel a terrible amount of pride in their government. Ours is a country ruled in perpetuity by neoliberal bores, a dreary cabal of technocrats and landlords who revere American corporations and despise the poor. Ireland is a nation of high GDP and high homelessness, a shameless tax haven for tech giants, where the healthcare system ranks among the worst in the developed world and our shit infrastructure more generally fails to meet people’s needs. Our fawning leaders are subservient to the whims of their masters in Washington and Brussels, as ordinary people are forced, day by day, to endure the indignities of an endless cost-of-living crisis.

But there is one subject, at least, in which our governing class stands out for the better: its steady condemnation of Israel’s crimes against humanity.

To walk the streets of Dublin, as I did for the first time in a long time this month, is to feel the strength of Irish support for the Palestinians. Their flag flies everywhere, surpassed only by the Irish tricolor itself, while large gatherings of people have a tendency to break into spontaneous chants of “Free, free Palestine.” Pro-Palestinian protests are well-attended and frequent, Irish artists and sporting institutions tend to be among the most vocal pro-Palestine voices in their industries, and there is clarity throughout the population that Israel is committing atrocities with impunity. The Irish, seeing flashes of our own struggle against British imperialism reflected back to us, are overwhelmingly behind the Palestinians, to the extent that our government, unable to ignore the weight of feeling, is forced to speak out.

Ireland is not alone in Europe in condemning the genocidal crimes of Israel, but it is among a small few. As large European countries like Germany and the United Kingdom, not to mention the European Union itself, shamelessly support Israel’s campaign of annihilation, Ireland has recognized the state of Palestine and decided to join South Africa’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel. It has not flinched from the inevitable accusations of anti-Semitism that have been flung its way from Israel, which, last week, threw another hissy fit and announced it was closing its embassy in Dublin, owing to “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.”

Israel, by cutting diplomatic ties with a nation it disagrees with, has again demonstrated how little it cares for international norms, while Ireland comes out of the affair looking rather good. But there is an uncomfortable truth the Irish people must confront: our government, while often saying the right things, is nonetheless supporting Israel’s crimes in several material ways.

Ireland, like Israel, is a part of the American empire. The state is subservient to U.S. interests, to the extent that it even allows for a de facto American air base to operate on its soil. It is believed that weapons, sent from the United States and bound for Israel, have passed through this air base and, more generally, have passed through Irish airspace several times since the Gaza genocide began. This makes the Irish state, no matter how tough its rhetoric may be, complicit in what Israel does with those weapons.

The Irish government, too, has failed to pass a bill, first proposed way back in 2018, which would ban trade between Ireland and illegal Israeli settlements. More disturbingly, it has emerged that exports of “dual use” goods — that is, items which can be used in either civilian or military settings — have actually increased from Ireland to Israel over the last year, even as the genocide unfolds. These items, comprised mostly of information and communication technologies, may very well have been used for committing war crimes. Reports have also shown that the Irish Department of Defence has, over the last decade, spent at least €8.5 million on Israeli surveillance drones and military equipment, with much of that sum going to the Israeli government-owned firm Aeronautics Defence Industries, which produces unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) vital to Israel’s obliteration of Gaza.

Israel has, over the last year of genocide and war, sold bonds as a way to help finance its military machine. But in order to sell bonds within the European Union, it is necessary for third-country issuers — that is, non-members of the E.U. — to select a central bank within an E.U. member state to facilitate sales within the bloc. Israel once used the United Kingdom to this end, but, after Brexit, it turned to Ireland. The Central Bank of Ireland is today the gateway for Israel’s war bond sales in Europe.

The reason why Israel selected Ireland is unclear, but, whatever the rationale, a central bank is not allowed to object to an issuer’s decision unless it feels it has a legal basis to do so. The Irish Central Bank, then, argues it is in no position to back out. But surely facilitating the sale of bonds for the purposes of sustaining a “plausible genocide,” as the ICJ has termed Israeli actions in Gaza, warrants urgent action being taken? As Pearse Doherty, a senior member of opposition party Sinn Féin, put it, “This isn’t shares in Coca-Cola, this is to kill kids, this is the destruction of an entire state, this is incursions into Lebanon and elsewhere. This is carpet-bombing, this is ethnic cleansing at a massive scale.”

It has been maddening, this past year, to listen to so many Western politicians lie to justify a genocide. To hear instead, then, Irish leaders largely speak out against it has been a small comfort. They do so because the people of Ireland refuse to stand for what is being done to the Palestinians, and there is pride to be found in that. But that should not allow for complacency. The bleak reality is that the Irish state, in so many ways, has dragged its heels on taking meaningful action. It is entangled with Israel at the same time as it is a critic, and, until it frees itself, the righteous words of our leaders will ring hollow.