The sight of riotous chaos on Dublin’s streets throws into fiery relief how Ireland, a country that sees itself as Europe’s post-colonial conscience and tribune for the cause of the Palestinian Arabs, could soon have its own difficult choices to make. 

The torching of police cars and public buses and looting of shops in the city immortalized in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” began after five people — three of them children — were injured in a knife attack. Ireland’s chief police commissioner, Drew Harris, spoke of “scenes that we have not seen in decades.”

What Commissioner Harris calls an “extraordinary outbreak of violence” perpetrated by “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology” appears to have been precipitated by a rumor that the assailant was a foreign national. One image of a ravaged bus had the word “Out” scrawled on its rear window. O’Connell Street, a crucial backdrop for the 1916 Easter Rising, was a site of destruction.   

The British Broadcasting Company, though, reports that the suspect is “an Irish citizen in his late 40s who has lived in the country for 20 years.” As police were investigating the crime scene, several members of the mob attempted to break through the cordoned-off area and disrupt law enforcement. More than 30 have been arrested. 

Ireland’s Taoiseach, or prime minister, Leo Vadakar, noted in a statement on Friday that “yesterday we experienced two terrible attacks — the first was an attack on innocent children; the second was an attack on our society and the rule of law.” He added that the 500 people involved in the riot “brought shame” on Ireland. 

The country’s justice minister, Helen McEntee, warned that a “thuggish and manipulative element must not be allowed to use an appalling tragedy to wreak havoc.” Police, though, have been tight-lipped about whether the attack is best understood as a terrorist incident. A poster spied at the ensuing riot read, “Irish Lives Matter.” 

Ireland’s central statistics office discloses that over the past year the number of immigrants to Ireland had reached a 16-year high of 141,600, and included more than 40,000 Ukrainians. The riot was allegedly fueled by online rumors that the stabber was of Algerian extraction. Last week, a Slovak immigrant was convicted in the murder of a primary school teacher, Aisling Murphy.

A five time mixed martial arts champion, Conor McGregor, a Dublin native and critic of immigration, took to X on Friday to share with his more than 10 million followers that “there is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place, and there has been zero action done to support the public in any way, shape or form with this frightening fact.”

The uproar at home comes as Ireland has taken the side of the Palestinian Arabs in Hamas’s war against Israel. Mr. Varadkar calls Israel’s battle against Hamas an exercise in “revenge” and the foreign minister, Micheál Martin, lambasts it as “disproportionate.” In response, Israel’s heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, has called for Gazans to “go to Ireland or the desert.” 

A former Irish representative to Ramallah, Niall Holohan, tells the Guardian that the identification with the Palestinian Arabs is “part of our psyche — underneath it all we side with the underdog.” He explains that the country’s tiny Jewish population — around 2,500 — “has given us a freer hand to take what we consider a more principled position” against the Jewish state. 

Ireland’s opposition party, Sinn Féin, has put forward a motion to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court. The party’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, has called on the government to “send the Israeli ambassador home.” Sinn Féin’s party conference this month featured chants of “Free Palestine” and numerous members draped in keffiyehs. Sinn Féin is projected to emerge as the largest party in Ireland’s next elections, in March 2025. 

Ireland, in 1980, was the first country to call for a state for the Palestinian Arabs, and was the last country in the European Union to allow for an Israeli embassy in its capital. Adding to the antagonism is that the pro-British faction in Northern Ireland has long identified with the symbols of the Jewish state, while the republicans have seen their struggle reflected in the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. 

The grandfather of Israel’s president, Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, served as the first chief rabbi of Ireland between 1921 and 1936. One former lord mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe, a Jew, advised both a leader of the  Irish Republican Army, Michael Collins, and the commander of the Irgun and future prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin.