(Gatestone Institute) Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin - Ireland today is the source of continual public displays of hostility toward Israel. Yet a historical romance between the Jews and the Irish dates back at least to Ireland's famine years (1845-1852) which killed about a million Irish citizens, with another million emigrating abroad. The greatest contributor to relieving the famine during the "Great Hunger" was the British Jewish financier Baron Lionel de Rothschild. Ties between Jews and Ireland date back to even earlier times, when in 1712 Sephardic Jews fleeing Catholic Portugal were given refuge, ironically, in Catholic Ireland. Similar refuge was extended to Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eamon de Valera, one of the political leaders of the 1916 Irish rebellion and later Prime Minister and President of an independent Ireland, had a close relationship with the "Sinn Fein Rebbe," Rabbi Isaac HaLevi Herzog. Herzog became Chief Rabbi of Ireland, and his son Chaim served as the State of Israel's sixth President (1983-1993). Another revered Irish Jew is the former twice-elected Mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe. He was the Irish Republican Army's principal procurer of guns from America and Germany during Ireland's War of Independence from Britain. For those who might doubt the shared values of Israel and Ireland, they might recall that the codename of former Jewish underground fighter in Mandatory Palestine, and later Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was "Michael Collins" - after the great Irish military hero. The writer was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
2019-03-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive