Ireland

Letter from Dublin

As in nearly all Western European countries, there are those in Ireland who would have us believe that their country has a special relationship with the Middle East. Some of this has to do with trade, some with the sharing of enemies. But the affinities of Ireland with the Middle East, these Irish claim, are deeper and more binding than that. In the nineteenth century the leadership of the movement for Irish Catholic emancipation within Protestant society supported the parallel movement for Jewish freedom within gentile society. In this century, both Zionist and Arab nationalists have sought to invoke the Irish “example.”