Last month, tensions between the southern Irish state and "Israel" following the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood came to a head with the announcement by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar that the Israeli Embassy in Ireland would cease operations, Tel Aviv having maintained a diplomatic presence in the country since 1996.

Citing Dublin’s recognition of the State of Palestine in May, its support for South Africa’s genocide case against "Israel" in the ICJ, and its assertion that it would follow through with ICC-issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Security Minister Yoav Gallant, in the unlikely event that either ever visited Ireland, Sa’ar subsequently went on to decry Taoiseach Simon Harris as "Antisemitic", in clear spite of the fact that Zionist settlers are predominantly of Ashkenazi descent, in stark contrast to the actual Palestinian Semites being held under Israeli subjugation since 1948.

Condemning the southern Irish State’s support for South Africa’s legal pursuit against Tel Aviv would also be another bemusing complaint from Sa’ar, considering that within 48 hours of Al-Aqsa Flood being launched, Gallant would order a blockade of food, water, and electricity on the beleaguered Gaza Strip before going on to declare "We are fighting human animals". Actions and language that could not be described as anything less than genocidal, as have the proceeding 45,000+ Palestinian deaths within the past 14 months, with an estimated 11,000+ of that toll being children.

Indeed, seven months prior to Al-Aqsa Flood, hardline Israeli Minister Orit Strock would envisage the re-annexation of the Gaza Strip in a scenario that would "involve many casualties" indicating that "Israel’s" current genocidal campaign in Gaza was planned in advance, rather than in response to the "unprovoked" attack by the Al-Qassam Brigades on October 7^th, 2023. Adding credence to this theory were three separate media reports in the days following Al-Aqsa Flood, from the Associated Press, the New York Times, and CNN, each outlining seemingly unheeded warnings by Egyptian and US intelligence officials to Tel Aviv that a large-scale attack was imminent.

It would also emerge that Universal Paralello, the electronic music event held on the border of Gaza, had only changed its location two days beforehand following the falling through of a site on the Egyptian border. The idea that there were no serious security or insurance concerns on holding an event on the border of a location where clashes had only taken place between the Al-Quds Brigades and Israeli Forces the previous Summer, is simply unfathomable. Even more damning evidence against "Israel" would come to light when a report by Israeli outlet Haaretz revealed that the Hannibal Directive, in which Israeli Forces are instructed to kill their own troops rather than allow them to be taken prisoner, was put into place on October 7th, and was ultimately a key contributory factor to the death toll on the day.

Returning to Ireland, relations between the southern Irish State and "Israel" would continue to deteriorate following the commencement of Al-Aqsa Flood. In November 2023, one month after the beginning of the operation, Israeli Minister Amihai Eliyahu would declare that Palestinians should "go to Ireland or the desert" in a move that would both ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and destabilise Ireland through the influx of migrants, his statements later being echoed by former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard - who served almost thirty years in a US prison for passing on State secrets to Tel Aviv - in line with an Israeli government plan to mass-expel Palestinians from Gaza. In October, following "Israel’s" invasion of Lebanon, Irish UN troops would also come under fire from Israeli Forces, almost resulting in a USS Liberty-style incident, exacerbating Irish-Israeli tensions that would ultimately culminate with the closure of "Israel’s" Embassy in Ireland last Sunday. 

Rather than these tensions being an isolated occurrence taking place as a result of the current Israeli genocide in Gaza however, Irish solidarity for the Palestinian cause is a historical phenomenon, the roots of which go back centuries.

In the late 16th century, English Crown rule in Ireland was concentrated in a south-eastern Dublin-centered area known as The Pale, with the vast majority of the country still remaining under the rule of Gaelic Chieftains. Most influential amongst these Irish leaders would be the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O’Neill, the ruler of the northern Ulster province.

Attempts by the Crown to extend its rule throughout Ireland, and resistance by the Gaelic Chieftains against such measures, would eventually culminate in the Nine Years War from 1594 until 1603, fought between the forces of O’Neill and the English. Eventually ending with the defeat of the Ulsterman and his subsequent exile and death in Spain, England would soon seek to rubber stamp its authority on the Irish province that had been most resistant towards its advances.

At the beginning of the 17th century, thousands of English and Scottish settlers would be moved into Ulster in a mass-displacement of the native Irish. Tensions from this move would slowly boil for several decades, before eventually erupting in 1641. A large-scale uprising against English rule would see the majority of the country come back under Irish control and the establishment of an Irish Confederation strategically aligned with supporters of the English King Charles I, engaged in the English Civil War at the time.

This arrangement would last until the defeat and subsequent execution of Charles in London in 1649, at which stage English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell would arrive in Ireland to begin a genocidal re-conquest of Ireland, foreshadowing his future Israeli counterpart’s "to Ireland or the desert" statement by declaring that the displaced Irish could "go to Hell or to Connacht". Connacht being the westernmost province of Ireland to which the Crown had planned to expel the native Irish from the rest of the country.

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Likewise, in Palestine, a wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe, known as the Aliyah (Hebrew for "Ascent") and lasting from 1881 to 1903, would coincide with the formal establishment of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) by Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. The second wave of immigration would begin in 1904, this time coming mainly from Russia, and lasted until 1914 when the first World War began. It would be during this period that the growing influence of Zionism would be rubber stamped.

In 1916, with Britain on the verge of a catastrophic military defeat to Germany, the British Zionist Lobby approached Downing Street with an offer. In return for instructing their American counterparts to lobby for the United States, then a neutral party, to enter the conflict on the side of the Allied Powers, Britain would agree to assist in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in the event of Allied victory in the conflict.

Agreeing to this request, Britain and France would then begin secret negotiations which would result in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, named after both countries’ respective chief negotiators, and which established London and Paris’ envisaged spheres of influence in post-conflict Ottoman territories, it being agreed that Palestine would become a British mandate.

Following the entry of the US to the war the following year, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour would issue the Balfour Declaration, reiterating Britain’s support to Lord Rothschild, scion of the famed banking dynasty and leading member of Britain’s Jewish community, that Downing Street would assist in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The subsequent defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 would see Palestine become a British mandate two years later in line with Sykes-Picot.

As the 1920s began, large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine from Eastern Europe and Russia would continue, eventually reaching the extent where tensions would begin to arise with the native Arab population. Tensions that would soon erupt as the 1930s dawned.

In January 1933, following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, Berlin would sign the Haavara Agreement with the Zionist Federation of Germany, which would see Jews being granted free passage to leave Germany for Palestine, provided they first sold their assets, before being reimbursed upon arrival to Palestine by the Anglo-Palestine Bank, who had taken part in the deal upon instruction by the Jewish Agency for Israel, a branch of the WZO set up specifically to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine. Exacerbating already existing tensions between indigenous Arabs and Jewish immigrants, riots would break out in Jerusalem (al-Quds) in October of that year following the break-up of a planned meeting by the Arab Executive Committee by British police. Violence would erupt in Jaffa, Haifa and Nablus in the weeks that followed, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries.

Three years later in 1936, tensions would erupt again in Palestine over the continuing British rule and the scale of Jewish immigration to Palestine. This period of instability would last until 1939, when the second World War began, the aftermath of which would have grave repercussions for the Palestinians.

Following Allied victory in Europe, Palestine would once again be beset by instability, with the Zionist paramilitary group Irgun playing a key role. In July 1946, the group would bomb Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, the headquarters of the British administration, in an attack that killed 91 people. The following year, following the execution of three of its members, Irgun would kidnap and hang two British sergeants, before booby-trapping their bodies with explosives. Resulting in another British officer being wounded while attempting to retrieve them, the move would cause widespread revulsion in Britain. London would soon decide that its presence in the region was no longer tenable.

Approaching the newly-formed United Nations for a solution, a plan was put in place to divide Palestine into Arab and Jewish states in a move that would grant Jews the majority of the land, despite being an overall minority in Palestine. An unworkable plan, and one that would soon lead to conflict.

On the 15th of May 1948, in an event known in Arabic as the Nakba (Catastrophe) 700,000 Palestinians would become refugees in their homeland overnight with the establishment of the "Israel". 76 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing would follow, with Britain having played a key role. A situation that bore a stark similarity to the history of Ireland. As a result, despite the geographical distance between Ireland and Palestine, a natural affinity would begin to develop between both countries.

At the dawn of the 1970s, when civil rights marches were brutally beaten off the streets in the occupied north of Ireland, and armed Republican organisations such as the IRA and INLA began to emerge in response, the PLO forged links with both groups, organising for arms shipments to Ireland and for members of both organisations to attend training camps in friendly nations such as Lebanon and Libya.

Like "Israel", the statelet in occupied Ireland was also established on the basis that the indigenous population would be subjugated by a settler-class, leading to armed uprisings in both occupied territories in the decades that followed. Solidarity would continue between both Ireland and Palestine, including a striking display in 1981, when Palestinian prisoners in the Nafha prison smuggled out a letter of support for Irish Republican prisoners engaged in a hunger strike for political status at the time, which was then read out at a rally in Belfast. An undoubtedly historical bond based on a similar past, and with the incoming Trump administration looking set to endorse an Israeli land grab of the West Bank, one that looks set to continue into the future.