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Source: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ireland-has-been-consumed-by-hatred-of-israel/
Ireland Has Been Consumed by Hatred of Israel
(Spectator-UK) Brendan O'Neill - In the Republic of Ireland you will struggle to find one person who has not converted to a strange and all-consuming faith: Israelophobia. Wherever you go, you'll see it and hear it - that swirling animus for the Jewish state. The political class speaks of little else. The media are feverishly obsessed. From every political party, every TV set, every soapbox, the cry goes out: Israel is evil! It's inescapable. It's all over Dublin. You won't walk five meters without seeing a youth wearing a keffiyeh and a look of smug self-satisfaction. The Palestinian flag flutters at Trinity College. Out in Connemara, where my parents are from, Palestinian flags fly in random fields. It feels like the Jewish state has become a Satan substitute in post-Catholic Ireland. You prove your virtue through renouncing it. When I switch on the radio, I hear an interview with a folk singer from Galway who's become a national treasure by going on a "hunger strike for Gaza." The presenter fawns over her with holy reverence: Ireland's new saints. I take a pint in a quiet bar in Clifden. A TV in the corner is whispering about genocide. It's a panel discussion about Israel's crimes against humanity. They all agree. Ireland is in the grip of a new hysteria. The country I love has fallen. Who will save it?