IRELAND – When did the Irish become anti-Semitic?

ARUTZ SHEVA – All of a sudden and from out of nowhere, since it’s February and not much else to do, Ireland has decided that it’s time to pick on the Jews. The Senate over there has been on the verge of passing a bill making it unlawful to buy or sell anything from Israel’s “territories.” You could get fined and/or imprisoned if, say, you are caught purchasing a golf club from the “West Bank.”  

Same punishment if you bring back juicy oranges from Ariel.

That measure, which got widespread support within the Parliament, has been set aside, for the time being. It’s been put on hold on second reading or second thought after the Trump Administration got wind of it and, to put it briefly, threatened to render even-handed justice – You boycott Israel, the United States will boycott you.

So, message received. The proposal has been tabled and whether it comes up again or not, makes no difference – not to me.

The fact that it came up at all, and came so close to being passed, is what’s so disturbing.

It comes as a kick to the solar plexus to those of us who never met an Irishman we didn’t like.

This libel – from the land of James Joyce…and thus from the hand that created Leopold Bloom, whose Jewishness was celebrated by Joyce throughout “Ulysses.”

More than that, Bloom’s Jewishness (though Joyce has him converting) is celebrated in Ireland and around the world every year June 16 as part of Bloomsday.

So Ireland’s greatest writer was decidedly not anti-Semitic, quite the reverse — why not leave well enough alone?

Obviously that is not the way the world turns. There is always, out of the blue, some other country heard from.

Poland – okay. We know about Poland, as many times as its lawmakers try to cover-up the past— “Who, me? We saw nothing. We heard nothing. We did nothing.”

But Ireland, where Jews arrived some 1,000 years ago, has no such history…except for the usual pub-crawler slurs, which Joyce does mention. But no serious pogroms, far as I know.

Yes, Jews fleeing the Holocaust were unwelcomed – but that’s another topic.

The topic of the moment is why this keeps happening? Every time hate-peddling (which this is) takes a rest here, it pops up there, there now in Ireland.

Ireland? Ireland shares no borders with Israel. Ireland is some 2,600 miles away from Israel. So what’s the problem?

Anti-Semitism is the problem…but only among the few, I will continue to believe…the few unfortunately who have the power to darken an entire enlightened country.

The Irish coming to America a century ago suffered greatly from anti-Irish bigotry…so today’s Americans who come from that ancestry know what it feels like to be picked on.

Was that bill put forward on a whim, or is it that every country gets a crack at the Jewish State and it was simply Ireland’s turn?

I don’t recall Israel sticking its nose into Ireland’s time of “troubles,” so I can’t imagine what business Ireland has with Israel.

If those Senators really want to find injustice, it’s happening right around the corner in places like Rotherham where thousands of British girls are being raped by Third World gangs.

Or is that too close to home?