To see what a lethal malady Israelophobia can be, how fully it can rot a man\u2019s soul, consider recent events in Ireland.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Ireland played Qatar at the Aviva Stadium<\/a> in Dublin. The match was continually disrupted by raging spectators who threw tennis balls emblazoned with the words \u2018STOP THE GAME\u2019 on to the pitch. But here\u2019s the thing, the amazing thing: they weren\u2019t referring to this match, this game against a despotic, misogynistic, homophobic regime whose hyper-exploitation of migrant workers has caused thousands to perish<\/a> in the Arabian sun. No, they were referring to a future fixture against \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 the Jewish nation.<\/p>\n Ireland is due to play Israel<\/a> in the UEFA Nations League on 27 September. This has got the keffiyeh classes fuming. Worried they might catch something \u2013 the pox of genocidal mania, perhaps \u2013 the \u2018progressive\u2019 middle classes love to forcefield their precious lives against the wares, food and art of that most unholy state in the Middle East. So naturally, the pompous Trinity grads of the Dublin left are devoting furious amounts of moral energy to stopping the Ireland-Israel game. And there they were at the Aviva Stadium, so drunk on demented animus for the Jewish State that they could see their team play Qatar \u2013 a nation that jails homosexuals, robs women of their fundamental rights and maintains a massive migrant underclass to do all its hard graft \u2013 and still think to themselves: \u2018Well, we had better not play against Israel.\u2019<\/p>\n Watching those tennis balls rain down on the Aviva pitch, I thought that this is one of the finest, grimmest case studies of Israel Derangement Syndrome. This was the Jew-state myopia of the activist class summed up. Their team plays against a nation notorious for its tyranny and its persecution of women and minorities \u2013 not to mention its funding of the Islamofascists of Hamas \u2013 and all they can think about is Evil Israel. The Jewish nation occupies their every waking thought. It\u2019s an obsession that has completely fried their moral circuit boards. It has blinded them to every other injustice on Earth. Russia could nuke Europe into an apocalyptic wasteland and these people would still be wrapped in their keffiyehs around a campfire hoarsely bleating about \u2018Fucking Israel\u2019.<\/p>\n Israelophobia is rife in Europe. It stalks the academy. It travels at lightning speed through the digital highways. It is a mandatory belief in literary circles. But here in Ireland it is especially bad. It is everywhere. The nightly news still leads with lurid tales of Israel\u2019s \u2018murder\u2019 in Gaza and Lebanon, as even the BBC has discovered that other things are happening in the world. You won\u2019t walk two blocks in Dublin without encountering someone wearing a keffiyeh and a punchable smug smirk. Even way out West, on the Atlantic coast, there it was, flying from the roof of the first pub I ever got drunk in: the Palestine flag. Why?<\/p>\n That flag is so omnipresent that it feels like Ireland has been colonised again \u2013 not by the Brits this time but by that Euro-fervour of anti-Zionism. All of the most Guardian-approved, Shoreditch-thrilling Irish artists \u2013 Sally Rooney, Kneecap<\/a>, the Mary Wallopers \u2013 bow obsequiously at the altar of Israelophobia. <\/p>\n Enjoying spiked?<\/p>\n Why not make an instant, one-off donation?<\/p>\n We are funded by you. Thank you!<\/p>\n \n \u00a35 Choose an amount<\/p>\n \n Donate now\n <\/p>\n \n Please wait… <\/p>\n It stinks up the political class, too. Indeed, just last week, Margaret Connolly, the sister of the Irish president, Catherine Connolly, returned from one of those thwarted flotilla jollies to Gaza that the hyper-smug love to engage in. She said Israel behaves like a \u2018Nazi state\u2019<\/a>. She described her brief detention in Israel as being akin to a \u2018concentration camp\u2019. She said she and her fellow seafaring narcissists \u2018got a feeling of what the Jews felt like during the Second World War\u2019. Comparing the two-day detainment of posh, well-fed mugs with the incarceration and burning to death of millions of Jews? There\u2019s repugnant, then there\u2019s that. Stay classy, Israel-haters.<\/p>\n Defamations against Israel fall from the mouth of every influencer here. Even a sports presenter, following the game with Qatar, could casually say on air that Israel is waging a \u2018genocidal campaign\u2019<\/a> in Gaza. Nothing to say about Qatar? The team we just played? Which funded the army of anti-Semites that killed more Jews in one day than anyone else has since the Nazis? Of course not. Israel is the all-consuming devil that stalks the fever dreams of Ireland\u2019s pious. It is a substitute Satan in a post-Catholic land. You can\u2019t even watch the footie here without being subjected to self-righteous homilies about the uniquely wicked nature of this far-off nation. It is relentless. It is exhausting.<\/p>\n And get this \u2013 the Irish men\u2019s cricket team is due to play Afghanistan<\/a> in Belfast in August. Do the sanctimonious of Dublin 4 long to stop that game too, in protest against the Afghan government\u2019s violent gutting of women\u2019s rights, its theft from women not only of the right to play sport but also of the right to show their faces in public, speak in public and attend schools and universities? Nope. There have been a few expressions of \u2018moral discomfort\u2019 about hosting the Afghanis but nothing like the orgy of moral inebriation that greeted the news that the Irish football team would play Israel. As I say, moral circuit boards fried, all over this isle.<\/p>\n Israelophobia is rotting Ireland\u2019s soul. The Irish establishment\u2019s frothing animus for the Jewish state is an embarrassment to us Irish who refuse to convert to the cult of Israel-hate. It is disproportionate, hysterical, and so obviously driven by bigotry, meaning these people will go mental over a sports fixture against the Jewish nation but say nada about a sports fixture against an Islamist nation ruled by violent men who treat women like cattle. Let Ireland be a lesson \u2013 when you drink too heartily from the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia, you lose your reason and decency. You become so consumed by hatred for a tiny foreign state that you let your own state go to moral rack and ruin.<\/p>\n Brendan O\u2019Neill is spiked\u2019s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O\u2019Neill Show<\/a>. Subscribe to the podcast here<\/a>. His latest book \u2013 After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation \u2013 is available to order on Amazon UK<\/a> and Amazon US<\/a> now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy<\/a>. <\/p>\n
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