It makes it all the more interesting, then, to look at the troubled and difficult relationship between the Irish and the Jews. There has been some extraordinary integration - a father/son pair of Lord Mayors of Dublin were Jewish - but also distrust, fear and misunderstanding that continues to this day. Much of that is political - as a post-colonial nation itself, Ireland has some serious issues (legitimate ones, I think) with Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. Add that to old-fashioned issues the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church had with Jews, Irish "neutrality" during WWII, and the Irish military presence in the UN's force in Lebanon for a few decades now, and you have a truly strange relationship.

The IRA used to identify with the Jews as fellow-sufferers under British occupation (till 1948, Israel/Palestine was under a British mandate). These days, you'll see Yassar Arafat's face next to Bobby Sands's on Republican murals in Belfast.

Two historically-oppressed groups don't necessarily recognize themselves in each other. Worse yet, sometimes they do recognize themselves, and don't like what they see.

-A Dublin Jew