An Irish college-student working in the American midwest during the summer was greeted on arrival at the host family’s home with the denunciation: “You Irish are anti-Semitic and supporters of terrorism.” The greeter was not referring to the IRA or 30 years of the Troubles but to Hamas, the perpetrators of a murderous rampage in Israel almost a year ago. To be told, in a country where millions of voters want the inciter of a deadly insurrection to be their president, that your country encourages terrorists is a bitter horse tablet to swallow. It exposes the new reality that Ireland is no longer universally loved.
Florida state politician and Donald Trump ally Randy Fine has labelled Ireland “anti-Semitic” and a supporter of “Muslim terror”. He objected to this country hosting the US College Football Classic at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin last month. Similar sentiments have been expressed by London financier Ben Goldsmith, who has called Ireland “the most anti-Semitic place in Europe”.
Last November, Israel’s heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, said his country should retake the Gaza Strip and Palestinians “should go to Ireland or the deserts”. Israel Hayom, a free, daily Hebrew-language newspaper, has reported on the “not so simple reality of life” for Israelis and Jews living in “the [apparently, men only] land of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Roy Keane, U2 and The Pogues”; a country famous for “whiskey, beer, music and joie de vivre”.
There is a consoling saying in journalism that when the criticism turns nasty, you must be doing something right. Ireland’s critics dislike the independent stance the Government has taken in recognising Palestinian statehood and in calling for a review of the EU’s trade deal with Israel to ascertain if its human rights conditions are being upheld amid the slaughter in Gaza. To many Irish citizens appalled at the killings of more than 41,000 Gazans – with the approval and arms of the US and other powerful states – the name-calling by Fine, Goldsmith and others shows that the Government must be doing something right.
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Yet it is not only Israel and its apologists who have grown immune to the underdog charms of this once-inoffensive, cap-in-hand land of mist and myth. There are places on this planet where it might almost be an incitement to violence to appear in public wearing a kiss-me-I’m-Irish leprechaun hat these days.
Russia, for one, is not a fan. Last May, Yuri Filatov, its ambassador in Dublin, alleged Ireland was an accessory to theft by supporting the EU’s seizure of profits from frozen Russian assets to fund aid for Ukraine. In an interview with the state-owned Russia 24 television station, he accused Ireland of being in the vanguard of “anti-Russian events” in the EU.
Mention Ireland in parts of Spain and Dubai and the instant association may be with wealthy criminals who control their international empires from there.
In the US, Ireland has been called a tax haven at a Senate hearing, as well as in Brussels in a March 2019 European Parliament report. The protracted Brexit negotiations unmasked a new level of Hibernophobia in the British establishment where the Daily Telegraph hardly paused for breath in various articles last April deriding Ireland as “arrogant”, blinded by hatred of Brexit, hypocritical and laughable.
In a show of clunky sarcasm, the former Tory minister and Brexit messiah Jacob Rees-Mogg mocked Irish Government concerns about Britain’s planned deportation of migrants to Rwanda by proposing they be sent to Northern Ireland where they could cross into the Republic instead and “be wonderfully safe as opposed to this dangerous land [and] the EU would be so happy because it would fulfil its beloved human rights obligations”.
While Telegraph and Tory anti-Irishness is nothing new, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Labour government spokesman, has described the attitude of recent Conservative cabinets to the Irish as “repellent”.
Farther abroad, Ireland’s military neutrality and refusal to contribute war machinery to Ukraine since the Russian invasion have won this country a new battalion of detractors. The erstwhile fightin’-n-drinkin’ Emerald Isle is now regarded by its more hawkish critics as a defence freeloader happy to rely on Nato and the UK to safeguard its territory while it pulls in billions of euro from multinational tech and pharma investment.
Ireland has well and truly kissed goodbye to its Shirley Temple id. Just as Hollywood’s child star grew up to the harsh reality that dimples and dancing no longer guaranteed universal affection, this country’s coming-of-age has delivered the same realisation. Our age of innocence as a global love object is over.
After November’s US presidential election and the departure of Joe “I’m Irish” Biden, the greening of the White House will be more relatable to ecology issues than to the incumbent’s genealogical roots. The already waning influence of Irish-America will gather pace in a country where Latinos have become the majority ethnic demographic.
Much of this is good news for Ireland, bar the tax haven and the crime gangs. Gone is the old insular country that went obsequiously with its begging bowl to Brussels and Washington and lacked the self-confidence to be anything other than universally loved. Ireland has grown into a more populous and diverse country. It’s a country where Oscar-winning actors, Olympic athletes and Booker Prize writers can flourish. A country prepared to defend its principles and its constitutional commitments despite criticism from abroad, at least some of the time. If it keeps going like this, it might even have the gumption to stop war planes using Shannon Airport as a stopover en route to foreign killing fields.
Though Spain and Norway recognised Palestinian statehood simultaneously with Ireland, those countries have attracted less vitriol, probably because the world is not accustomed to Ireland being boldly independent.
To anyone born here since the 1990s, Ireland may be a backward country in many ways, what with its deplorable infrastructure and public services but, for the rest of us, this is an Ireland we hardly recognise. To the 3,600 new citizens conferred in Dublin on Monday, welcome to our brave new world. Let’s help make it braver.