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Alexander Lucie-Smith's avatar

The damage this does to Ireland is catastrophic. And the UK is not far behind. Alas. When i was in Israel last Easter people constantly asked me what was happening in England, why was the country so anti-Israeli. The answer I gave was that the silent majority is pro-Israel, or at least wants to give Israel a fair hearing, and the anti-Israeli and ant-Jewish agitation comes from a very small but very vocal minority. In the painful to watch video the saddest thing is how the rest of the people in the bar did not intervene.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

It really is catastrophic -- I honestly feel it in my bones. To see a country that was so widely beloved turn out these psychopaths is just painful. And Ireland is hugely dependent on the good will of far richer, more powerful nations. From tourism to investment! Their obsessive preoccupation with Israel is an act of national self-harm.

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Simon Powell's avatar

There is such a reliance on American money, in years to come this current climate might come back and bite them on the arse.

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QE's avatar
Mar 17Edited

Pursuit of truth often results in hardship - even death as Christ demonstrated. St. Patrick would not be on your side here (not to say he would approve of rude behaviour, but he certainly wouldn't be an apologist for jews). Remember the Potato Famines. Don't be naive.

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Elizabeth's avatar

Thank you for calling them out Jenny….

“These women and many, many others like them, try to convince us they are motivated by “politics” or “values,” or some other high minded thing. But really they are just sour, petulant, miserabilists.” Also, ditto on the Eva Braun reference.

Im sick , sick and triple sick of women bullies who suffer no consequences for their nasty deeds. What on earth is corrupting the female culture to encourage this type of evil behavior? Im convinced that they perform for their social media audience. The reality to them is on the screen. Their real life in person experiences are used only for the show they project on the screen. There is no consideration for the humanity at hand. We women are supposed to be the tender, the compassionate ready to nurture a kinder gentler world. These woman are thugs with boobs. They are so captured by their ideology, they are incapable of embarrassment. But, thank you for calling them out in Ireland Jennie. Me and millions of American woman will be calling them out here as well.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

Thugs with boobs! Love it! 😂

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SJ's avatar

Thugs with boobs, who can't punch.

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9A's avatar

Audience capture is a helluva drug, eh?

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Katrina Biggs's avatar

I feel that the longtime lack of real consequences for bad behaviour right from childhood now, is coming home to roost. A smack on the backside wasn't nice to get as a child, but it was real, immediate, and remembered. Yes, I understand that there are some kids this doesn't work on, and I also understand how anti-smacking legislation was a way to try and prevent violence against kids. The latter hasn't worked, of course, and now there are kids growing up to be abusive and violent themselves purely from the lack of consequences for being so.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

I agree. It's as clear as day.

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Delightful Oddling's avatar

Thank you for writing this. (heartbreaking for me on a personal level as I am an American of Irish descent and used to visit Ireland each year. My husband and daughter are Jewish. We can't go right now.)

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Jenny Holland's avatar

You know what is so maddening? I'm Facebook groups where American liberals here in the UK are fretting over their "trans kids" returning to America right now, because they think it's not safe...And yet the real threat, the real hatred, is within their tribe. Wokeness is a demonic inversion of everything that is good.

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Delightful Oddling's avatar

Ugh - it sure is

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Cary Cotterman's avatar

I wish I could have taken that poor guy out of there and bought him a beer. He needs to be shown that not everyone outside of Israel is a psychopathic idiot.

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Jim Mara's avatar

Utterly despicable and grossly ignorant. Didn't the city of Dublin once have a Jewish mayor? I believe his name was Robert Briscoe but not sure.

Jim Mara

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Jenny Holland's avatar

There are a few very historic ties between the two. Chaim Herzog was born not far away from where I live. Dublin always had a Jewish community -- they are in Ulysses for goodness sake!!

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Donal Moloney's avatar

Cork City had a Jewish mayor, Gerald Goldberg.

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Rick Miller's avatar

As did Dublin: Robert Briscoe

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Can anyone please explain to me how and perhaps why the Western world (we're seeing it in spots in North America as well) has devolved into this ... what is it ... tribalism? I can almost understand why Islamists are so hell-bent on killing everyone who isn't them (not excusing by any means the indoctrination from young ages), but what's the source of this so-evident hatred from people who weren't raised in Islamist culture?

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Valoree Dowell's avatar

Just a random idea. Anti-Jew is another form of anti-Christian. They are related after all, as Jesus was Jewish. But more interesting to me is how these classy Irish bigots seemed to have missed the chapter on American discrimination and violence to the Irish immigrants in the 19th century. Maybe that’s how they learned to spit?

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Jenny Holland's avatar

That’s a really good way to put it.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Thank you for venturing into this. Am I interpretting your thoughts correctly? We have left - right political factions and you see a similar polarization on the religious front? That makes a lot of sense to me, particularly given the current penchant to revise history (which seems to have no geographic boundaries).

I was also wondering whether the Irish (god bless 'em for the lovely accents and exemplary poets / authors) are more easily pulled back into tribalism (of a sort) because "the troubles" weren't resolved so terribly long ago and the memories of combativeness may be lingering. Of course I could be way off base, and it certainly has no bearing on Canadian and US campus violence or terrorizing school kids in Jewish neighbourhoods.

Your idea makes far more sense, and here we are fighting the Crusades. Again.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

Profoundly important question.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

I would welcome any thoughts / opinions / insights. Perhaps if we get at the "why" we can start dealing with how to stop it?

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SJ's avatar
Mar 16Edited

I was thinking, that "These girls don't have empathy for a Palestinian person. They have empathy for symbols". People have symbolic "Friends" on Facebook. They have Symbolic "Likes" on Instagram. They have Symbolic compassion for a concept, not a person. The person's identity must be erased so that it fits into the symbol. Even their violence on behalf of such symbols like "Palestine" is symbolic. Hating a symbol also seems less bloody, because you aren't doing damage to a person but to a cause. All this symbology acts like a buffer to allow the girls to avoid understanding the impact of their actions.

I have no idea how that relates to tribal culture.....

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

“All this symbology acts like a buffer to allow the girls to avoid understanding the impact of their actions.” You have raised an interesting issue. At the same time, these two are grown women, not children who need “understanding” about the impact of their actions. They understand perfectly well what they are doing, and the impact it will have. The impact is the point.

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SJ's avatar
Mar 16Edited

But do they understand the impact of hurting someone? I mean, they understand it as "Getting even for those who are owed it" and "Speaking truth to power" and "This is what anti-colonization looks like" and "this person makes others feel unsafe, and we're going to restore a nonthreatening environment here". But do they understand that they've identified and labeled someone as something that don't deserve to exist? That they've announced to everyone online that this person both makes us afraid and deserves to die? That they've "marked" him with their spit, as a target in an unfair fight? I bet they'd never accept the meaning of their actions in those terms. XP, What do you think?

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

I think they are far-left antisemites who understand exactly what they are doing and would be happy to do it again.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Oh, this is great. Thank you. It makes a lot of sense (to me, anyway) and perhaps I was mistaken in thinking big-picture tribes. Then again, we have huge swaths of people whose only or most important connection to other humans is online and not "real" in the truest sense?

I'm hoping the trend to keep devices out of schools has an impact.

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SJ's avatar

I do wonder if tribalism is the lowest common denominator form of human organization. Basically, clan warfare. But since people are no longer connected well by bloodlines in the West, these "Girls" etc, are organizing their loyalties and morality around intersectional hierarchies of oppression. Since they buy into that nihilistic, amoral philosophy. One would rather be part of the historically marginalized group that is justified in using violence. And if you can't BE them, you advocate for them.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Brilliant. It explains a lot / addresses some key issues, and I appreciate your insights.

Douglas Murray once said something about feeling sorry for them (the terrorist supporters) if / when they ever grow up and look back at what they once were and the damage wrought.

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Andy's avatar

And another thing: a lot of these braindead activists have got it into their head that the more outrageous they are, the stronger their convictions are. Social media incentivises this too.

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Andy's avatar

I think a large part of is lack of guidance from adults. In the past, if you misbehaved or were disrespectful, someone else - usually an older person, not necessarily a family member - would call you out or have a quiet word with you. This doesn't seem to happen so much.

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Rick Miller's avatar

School’s curriculum as propagated by the teacher’s unions in the US.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

In Canada as well.

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Margaret Harold's avatar

Thank you very much for speaking up and out. you represent the the rest of us. I would love to have been there, they are classic mean girls, they knew who they were picking on. I'd be more than happy to give them options.

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Albert Cory's avatar

I WAS pro-Irish and I've actually been there. But anti-semitism is not OK, Paddy. Sorry.

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QE's avatar

You're very assured of your judgement.

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Kip🎗️'s avatar

Same. I visited a few decades ago, loved it and was a huge fan of the people and the place. No more. Ireland is poisoned now, and the vast majority of the Irish are toxic.

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Cary Cotterman's avatar

Lovely young women. I'm sure their parents are proud of them. No kidding, they probably are.

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SJ's avatar

10 Euros says that the Lebanese girl can't even speak Arabic.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

These bitches actually spit at him. In public

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John Kelleher's avatar

From my experience, random Irish Americans tended to be rabidly anti Semitic when I was growing up. Not surprising that it’s the same way in the homeland. By the way no one is supposed to acknowledge that.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

Yeah, I'm not exactly surprised to hear you say that, but I had the opposite experience in Irish-America. Maybe I was in a bubble? But my impression growing up was the Jews and Irish in New York anyway, were chummy allies.

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SJ's avatar
Mar 15Edited

New Yorkers are their own animal (Not the "Free Palestine Activists" or the Columbia University Transplants). Jews have always been here - often discriminated against, but always PART of us as a City. They are part of our experience of living - and a safe one. A primarily "Jewish Neighborhood" is code for "Good schools" and "Crime Low Enough for your wife to walk with the baby carriage." Look at the delis and the donors to the Met Museum, and both have Jewish names. We all recognize the positive connection. Plus, there's been lots of intermarriage, the Hasidic Jews notwithstanding. Ivanka Trump's marriage to a Jewish man and conversion to Judaism was not a shock to New Yorkers. After all the Trumps ARE New Yorkers.

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Jenny Holland's avatar

Yeah - that is true about NY. I guess that is where my impressions were formed. Both Jews and the Irish did very well in NY and maybe that made things rosier. We had a golden age and it’s been destroyed.

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SJ's avatar
Mar 16Edited

Agreed. My parents' generation, the Jews were jumped by the Italians in Brooklyn. I have some family that is half Jewish, half Italian from there - school was fun. Me, as a 4th Gen. NYer, growing up, I used to assume if someone was Caucasian appearance, and they weren't Irish or Italian, that they were Jewish. The Oct 7th Massacre "Columbia Protests", "Free Palestine" gang ups, were so scary to me, because it seemed a deliberate attempt to change the character and social contract of New York. For police, Universities, Democrat leaders to allow such aggressive rallies to assemble and expand...ones that remade Jews as the enemy in New York - it was a huge violation.

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John Kelleher's avatar

Your father was a leftie . So you weren’t where most of us were. Further, you’re much younger!

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Jenny Holland's avatar

True on both counts!

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Mitch's avatar

They say never hit a lady, but I don't see that as a constraint here since neither was a lady. He was assaulted and rightfully could teach them a lesson. They were using the same kind techniques that Hamas uses, attack and then hide behind women and children.

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SJ's avatar

Nah, he would have lost. They would have gotten him thrown in jail so fast. They WANTED that. I'm MORE angry at every woman in that restaurant that did not pull those girls by their hair out the door!

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Sing All The Earth's avatar

I am in the process of getting an Irish passport (as are my young adult children.) My mother was born and raised in Dublin and I, for many years, longed to live there. As a child of a foreign parent, I never fully felt at home in America, and Ireland was always “The Blest Isle”. In recent years I have been rethinking if it’s really worth the trouble. Terribly sad what you have shared here. Those girls should have to read Ulysses. “Beannachtai na Feile Padraig oraibh!”

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Jenny Holland's avatar

I know exactly what that feels like - I was obsessed with Ireland my whole childhood and was so happy to go live here as a teen. It’s such a shame as it was never a perfect place but it was immensely charming and unique and safe. An Irish passport is definitely worth it, imho! Just my two cents.

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Matthew Chapman's avatar

I lived in Dublin for a couple years back in the 1990s on assignment for my company. Loved the place, loved the people, love my Irish roots, loved the whole experience. Have always wanted to return.

Seeing the Ireland I once knew become something this disgusting breaks my heart. It will be very tough to go back, if I ever do.

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Y. Andropov's avatar

"God treats nations the way they treat the Jews."--B. Disraeli

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Adam David Worrall אדם's avatar

I wonder where I can get a "Kiss my ass, I'm Jewish" T-shirt for St. Patrick's Day. 😂

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