“Ireland, they say, has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?”

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

“- Why sir?” Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

“- Because she never let them in,” Mr. Deasy said solemnly.

— James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’

The newest nadir between Israel and Ireland is the tweet of the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, that one of the captives wrested from Gaza’s catacombs, 9-year-old Emily Hand, an Irish-Israeli citizen, was “lost” and has now been “found.” That is one way to put the abduction of a Jewish child on a sleepover and the murder of her stepmother. Emily’s saga asks — what to make of the divide between Ireland and Israel?

One would think that Ireland and the Jewish state would have a common sensibility, both having secured their independence in a revolt against the British. Both nations are in love with the land and their ancestral tongues, and are endowed with poets, writers, and songsters. Ireland’s greatest literary hero is Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew — patrilineally, at least. Many of his co-religionists were invested in the struggles for both Zion and Eire. 

The leaders of the Jewish state, though, reacted to Mr. Varadkar with indignation. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, whose grandfather was Ireland’s chief rabbi, noted that Emily was “kidnapped at gunpoint by monstrous and vile murderers.” Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, was even more vociferous, accusing Mr. Varadkar of “trying to legitimize and normalize terror.” He adds that the prime minister has lost his “moral compass.”

The uproar over Emily comes after Dublin’s erstwhile man at Ramallah, Niall Holohan, told the Guardian that Ireland’s miniscule Jewish population of around 2,500 has given his country a “freer hand to take what we consider a more principled position,” meaning in respect of  the Palestinian Arabs. This in contrast to countries with a “sizeable and influential” Jewish presence, who tilt their leaders toward Jerusalem.

It is worth pausing to wonder why Ireland’s hand  is so free with respect to the Middle East. The country’s centuries-long struggle against the British meant that it was neutral during World War II, but pro-Nazi sentiment was not scarce, and into the 1950’s refugees were being admitted on the basis of “good character of Catholic and Christian religions.” One scholar notes that in 1946, 100 Jewish orphans at Bergen-Belsen were denied admission.   

The alignment of the Irish with the Palestinian Arabs is not new — the Irish were the first in Europe to call for a Palestinian state. They did so in 1980. A spin through Belfast discloses that republican forces have adopted Palestinian Arab flags as their own, even as unionists who swear allegiance to London see echoed in the Star of David their own struggle. Sinn Féin, political heir to the Irish Republican Army, is an ally of the Palestinian cause.

That is, in our view, illogical and, in any event, a tragedy. It’s tempting to say that Ireland has been lost and has yet to be found, even as its republic is now in its second century. We are not here to chide the Irish, but to rue the fact that their country has chosen to hang back from full friendship with Israel. What would Joyce make of all this? He was not free from prejudice himself, but when he imagined Dublin, it was in large part through Jewish eyes.