ZOHRAN MAMDANI HIJACKS ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Mayor’s a Feckin’ Eejit

Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash

Israel | 10 June 2026, 07:00 am IST

Author’s note: I began writing the rough draft of this essay on March 17, 2026 while we in Israel were under sustained ballistic missile bombardment from Iran; I’ve worked on it intermittently since then, which explains its belated publication in early June (indeed, two days after we have again found ourselves under fire from Iran and Yemen).

1 | PATRONIZING & INSULTING

In New York City on St. Patrick’s Day, Zohran Mamdani delivered a lachrymose speech that managed to patronize and insult not only the Irish (whose festive day it was) but also Jews, Palestinians, and Brits.

St. Patrick’s Day in NYC is supposed to celebrate Ireland, the Irish, and Irish-Americans whereas the mayor — prominently displaying signature rhetorical tics virtue-signaling and pathos — used his speech to:

• Falsely accuse the Jewish people of genocide
• Paint Palestinians as abject, self-pitying victims without agency
• Imply his role as “weeping” Palestinians’ self-appointed non-Palestinian, non-Arab spokesman and savior
• Draw so false an analogy as to be cringeworthy between Palestinians and (according to him) the “weeping” Irish (who are in truth a self-respecting, industrious, plucky people)

2 | GENOCIDE-ASIDE

“Over the past few years, as we’ve witnessed a genocide unfold before our eyes, there has been deafening silence from so many.”¹

The boy mayor made the above remark as an aside, but to which genocide does he allude?

• The would-be genocide of Israeli Jews by Iranian-proxy Hamas (the government of militarized quasi-state Gaza) on October 7, 2023?²
• The would-be genocide of the Jewish people by the Islamic Republic of Iran?³
• Mass killings of Nigerians, Sudanese, and Yazidis?

The mayor — who serves up deafening silence in response to these atrocities by Islamists — must smear the Jewish people on every possible public occasion including St. Patrick’s Day (!), and here’s why:

[embed]Hamas' October 7th Genocide: Legal Analysis and the Weaponisation of Reverse Accusations - A Study… Hamas' October 7th Genocide: Legal Analysis and the Weaponisation of Reverse Accusations - A Study in Modern Genocide…doi.org

To lend apparent (not real) credibility to his smear campaign against the Jewish people, the mayor made use of guest Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland (1990–1997) and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002), who is herself on record slinging the genocide slur.⁴

But on the subject of Israel, Robinson already blew her factual and moral credibility more than two decades ago at the UN, where she:

• *“Fan[ned] the flames of Middle East conflict [by] describ[ing] Palestinian demonstrators hurling bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails as a ‘peaceful assembly.’”*⁵
• *“Hired as a Senior Advisor Mona Rishmawi, a human rights lawyer who equat[ed] Israel’s policies with those of the Nazis”*⁶
• *“Endorsed Palestinian propaganda that accusations of using Palestinian ambulances to convey explosives were baseless Israeli lies. In doing so, she chose to place greater trust in the Palestinian statement than in that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which witnessed the unloading of an explosive ‘suicide belt’ from an ambulance”*⁷
• *“Placat[ed] the powerful Islamic bloc in the United Nations [by] len[ding] her name and reputation to the whitewashing of the Iranian regime” and of the regime’s “hatred and anti-Semitism.”*⁸

Fast forward to Robinson’s St. Patrick’s Day speech⁹ that signaled her compassion for people “living under the shadow of war and suffering.”

Robinson used far too pretty a metaphor — living under [a] shadow — to describe the loud, explosive, terrifying reality of bracing for injury or death under sustained ballistic missile barrages.

Robinson listed among those who are currently suffering in war people “living . . . in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo” — but not us, not Israelis!

See what she did there?!! Please notice her expression of selective empathy and selective outrage, and her heavy-handed use of omission to manipulate truth:

• She intentionally did not name the Islamist regimes ruling Iran (clerics and the IRGC), southern Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas), and the West Bank (the Palestinian Authority), who routinely target Israeli cities, towns, and agricultural collectives with missiles, rockets, drones, and pay-for-slay terror attacks.
• She intentionally ignored Israeli suffering because her politics depend on whitewashing those who hurt us.

Mary Robinson’s deliberate deletion of Israelis from her list of suffering people trapped in war zones must have pleased Mayor Mamdani because it feeds into his uncompromising anti-Zionism, which calls for violently erasing the nation-state of Israel from the world map and revoking the Jewish people’s self-determination.

3 | ZOHRAN MAMDANI IS WEEPING

“To weep with those who weep is no small act. It is a choice, one that often requires sacrifice, a subjugation of the self, a material exertion . . . . For those who have long cared about universal human rights and the extension of them to Palestinians, silence, however, is nothing new, for Palestinians are so often left to weep alone.”¹⁰

Zohran Mamdani wants you to believe that he has “long cared about universal human rights” and that he therefore “weeps.”

I fail to see how this mayor who explicitly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel — which would involve the slaughter of (pesky fact) nearly 7.8M Israeli Jews — can believe that he is (as he self-advertises in every speech) a universalist and humanitarian.

Someone should tell him that universal human rights are not universal if you exclude from humanitarian consideration the Jewish people, or even the 46% of the world’s overall Jewish population who live in Israel.

Unless of course you define Jewish people as less than human, which is what Quran-thumping radicals teach submissive *true believers.*¹¹

AMONG THE RADICAL IMAMS WHO HAVE SHAPED ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S POLITICS ARE:

• Terror apologist the late Talib Abdur Rashid¹²
• Unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing¹³ and virulent homophobe¹⁴ Siraj Wahhaj

Imam Talib El-Hajj Abdur Rashid

The late Talib Abdur Rashid’s politics apparently hold an outsized sway over the boy mayor; according to historian (and polemicist) Raymond Ibrahim, “Mamdani has repeatedly called Abdur Rashid a mentor who ‘helped him integrate his Muslim faith with politics.’”

Ibrahim elaborates:

“The same Talib Abdur Rashid defended a man . . . convicted in 2007 of conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda”; “provided material support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad”; and “indicated he was very pro bringing Sharia [law]” to America, which Abdur Rashid condemned as “‘ruled by infidels according to the public laws based on something other than Sharia.’”¹⁵

And here are investigative journalists Steven Emerson and John Rossomando, writing for the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), re Abdur Rashid’s excuse for Iranian Israel-annihilationism:

“Rashid rationalized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stance on destroying Israel, saying it merely is a ‘sentiment born of the legitimate anger, frustration, and bitterness that is felt in many parts of the Muslim World.’”¹⁶

Let that sink in: According to the specious, barbarous illogic of the imam whom Zohran Mamdani calls his mentor, Muslims’ angry, frustrated, bitter feelings entitle them to obliterate the Jewish nation.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj

The mayor has praised Wahhaj as “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy [Brooklyn] community.”¹⁷

Raymond Ibrahim begs to differ re point two (pillar-of-the-community), citing not only Wahhaj’ alleged role in the WTC bombing but also his having “testified as a character witness for Muslim Brotherhood leader Omar Abdel Rahman,” “called for jihad in America,” and named the American government a “common enemy.”¹⁸

FAKE TEARS

Who imagined that this mayor known for his rictus grin can also fake his tears?

What he can’t fake — so please notice it — is his patronizing, infantilizing attitude toward Palestinians who according to him are “weep[ing] for so long.”

Someone should tell Zohran Mamdani that only infantilized adults perpetually weep.

Someone should suggest to him that Palestinians bear a huge chunk of responsibility for their eight-decades-long failure to launch — I mean, anything but wars, Intifadas, and coups.

No Expectations

The term “bigotry of low [or no!] expectations” describes the world’s patronizing, infantilizing attitude toward Palestinians — of whom nothing is demanded in the way of civilized behavioral norms, and who are encouraged to forever abdicate adult responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions.

Here’s a short list of individuals and institutions who for their own narcissistic personal and political ends must infantilize Palestinians — must keep them groveling, stuck in grievance, on the UNRWA dole, and assigned nihilistic roles as Jew-killers and martyrs:

• The Palestinian’s own elite and fabulously wealthy, corrupt leadership
• Arab governments
• The UN’s António Guterres and his protégé Francesca Albanese
• UNRWA and the UNRWA schools
• Türkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
• Australia’s Anthony Albanese and the UK’s Keir Starmer
• The West’s faux-progressive hate mobs playing dress up in keffiyehs

It is Palestinian leaders who have stolen the treasure that wealthy nations have poured into Palestinian coffers, misdirecting it toward three socially self-defeating goals:

• Keeping their kleptocratic dictatorships afloat in vast personal wealth
• Drowning their citizens in poverty and self-pity (which makes them easy to dominate and indoctrinate)
• Investing in military and terror infrastructures aimed at annihilating the Jewish people

It is the UN and the West who persist in treating Palestinian governments and society as would an irresponsible, infantilizing parent who chooses to indulge a cranky, tantrum-y, self-indulgent, radicalized grown son who (even at age 78) won’t budge from the basement except to set off bombs — when what that son should be told is that it’s high time to grow up, develop mature political and ethical standards of behavior, and resolve to play nice with the neighbors.

Red-Green Alliance

If anyone is tempted to deny Palestinians’ own agency in bringing about their own tragedies — then look in the direction of several opportunistic, self-perpetuating third parties who have for generations ruthlessly used Palestinians as sacrificial mercenaries (aka cannon fodder) in local, regional (Near & Middle Eastern), and global wars on the West.

Prominent among those who manipulate, exploit, and prolong Palestinian misery are:

• The Islamic Republic of Iran, whose explicit goal is achieving a global Caliphate (Islamic empire)
• Arab governments
• The extreme Left, whose explicit goal is the destruction of Western liberal democracy
• The United Nations, and UNRWA and the UNRWA schools that indoctrinate Palestinians in grievance and jihadi violence

4 | WHAT THE MAYOR SAID

“When I think of the Irish, I do not think first of oppression. I think of resistance.”¹⁹

I doubt that Zohran Mamdani has ever in his life thought of the Irish — at least, not before he or, more likely, an intern pulled a half-nighter to produce the scripted malarkey about the Irish mouthed by the mayor on St. Patrick’s Day.

Also, when Mamdani says “resistance,” he means it the way his Islamist-Marxist comrades mean it.²⁰

Malarkey!

“Who can better understand those who weep than [the Irish] who have been made to weep for so long?”²¹

The Irish, who are brilliant with words, have never had a problem defining themselves and describing their own lives.

For that reason alone, it’s hard for me to imagine that any self-respecting Irish person would agree to outsource the definition of what it is to be Irish.

The Irish are not a nation known for “weeping” — let’s start there! Moroseness is not in the national character! (I tell you this as someone who—unlike the mayor or whoever wrote his speech—has had the good fortune of visiting Ireland many times.)

Ireland’s fearless literary response to political and social oppression has famously included satire (Jonathan Swift) — and social critique conveyed with lyrical poignancy (Yeats, and the young Joyce who penned Dubliners) or self-deprecating wit (Ulysses).

Zohran Mamdani might do well to read Ulysses’ portrait of ranting Jew-hater the Citizen, whom Joyce intended for the novel’s most contemptible character.²²

He might also do well to read Yeats’ portrait of the aging Maud Gonne, for that’s who underneath her photogenic, surface prettiness the mayor’s hateful young wife²³ is headed unless she deradicalizes:

An intellectual hatred is the worst,

So let her think opinions are accursed.

Have I not seen the loveliest woman born

Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,

Because of her opinionated mind

Barter that horn and every good

By quiet natures understood

*For an old bellows full of angry wind?*²⁴

In Diaspora

As for the Irish diaspora: Before the mayor made his condescending outsider speech that got the Irish character wrong, he invited to the podium Peter Burke, the Republic of Ireland’s Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, who gave a dignified insider speech that got it right.

Burke did not describe a pathetic, aggrieved people who “weep” when faced with hardship; he described a people who are forward-facing, courageous, resilient, resourceful, hard-working — and who in the diaspora have integrated, built successful new lives, and made huge positive social contributions.²⁵

A Better Analogy

One of the ironies of Zohran Mamdani’s attempt to draw an analogy between Palestinians and the Irish who, according to him, share in common abject misery (!) — an interpretation condescending to both peoples — is that if an analogy is sought for the Irish character in adversity, the plucky Jewish people make a better fit.

There are also historical similarities: Both the Irish and Jewish peoples:

• Are ancient nations who lost sovereignty over beloved homelands (the Irish in 1172,²⁶ the Jews in 586 BCE²⁷ and again in 63 BCE²⁸)
• Perhaps would never have lost sovereignty had their societies not internally fractured from political infighting, which in each case led to one or more factions’ (Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster, in Ireland,²⁹ and Hasmonean kings Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II in Israel³⁰) inviting in powerful foreign rulers as allies (the Anglo-Normans under King Henry II³¹ and the ancient Romans under general Pompey³²)
• In our modern era, wisely made themselves statehood-ready decades prior to achieving full self-determination; I refer to the precursors of the Republic of Ireland — the Irish Free State (1922–1937)³³ and Éire (1937–1949)³⁴— and to the State of Israel’s precursor, the New Yishuv (1882–1948).³⁵
• Kept alive indigenous languages Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) and Hebrew — and in the late 19th century with political and cultural self-determination in mind, revived those languages³⁶-³⁷
• With the waning of the British Empire, gained independence from British rule (the Republic of Ireland in 1949, and the State of Israel in 1948)³⁸

WHO’S CALLING WHOM SETTLER-COLONIAL?

“As we know, it was on Irish soil that the British Empire developed their colonial project. So much of the exploitation later imposed elsewhere across the world was first honed in the plantations of Ireland.”³⁹

It is true that the British empire ruled and exploited the whole of Ireland for approximately 800 years before the island was partitioned in 1921 between Northern Ireland (UK) and the pre-independent Irish Free State.

The problem with the mayor’s speech (a version of which he gives at every opportunity) is his resolve to only ever tell a single story.

In the History of the World peddled by the mayor and his revolutionary comrades, only European Whites or Whites of European heritage have ever perpetrated imperialism — whereas in truth, the story of empires’ invading, conquering, colonizing, subjugating, and exploiting indigenous peoples could be told about every empire there ever was!

And this includes Arab Muslims⁴⁰ and Ottoman Turks (who are also Muslims),⁴¹ who in their heydays land-grabbed huge chunks of Africa, Central Asia, the Near and Middle East, and Europe (and rid these places, to the best of their ability, of Christians⁴²-⁴³— including today!⁴⁴).

And this includes — today, not yesterday! — proto-Caliphate (aspiring global empire) the Islamic Republic of Iran (est. 1979), whose declared ultimate aim is to export their theocratic-fascist revolution worldwide!⁴⁵

Indeed, colonial imperialism — the damning label that Islamist-Marxists slap on everybody else — precisely describes the Iranian regime’s expansionist ambitions.⁴⁶

Arab Slavers

And then there’s slavery, which the boy mayor didn’t address on St. Patrick’s Day — but I’ll say it while I’m at it: Long after the British Empire and the United States abolished chattel slavery (in 1833 and 1865, respectively), Muslims have continued to impose chattel and sexual slavery on non-Muslims.⁴⁷

In fact, the Irish suffered their share of chattel and sexual enslavement by North African Muslims during the Ottoman period.⁴⁸-⁴⁹

(And here’s an embarassing fact for Zohran Mamdani: St. Patrick — in whose direction he did briefly nod in his weeping Palestinians speech — started out life as a British or Welsh teenager of Roman descent who was abducted and sold into Irish slavery by Irish raiders.)⁵⁰

Another embarrassment for Zohran Mamdani’s fake, wholly benign history of Islam: According to the Global Slavery Index, the ten countries estimated to have the highest prevalence of modern slavery (defined as forced labor, human trafficking and forced marriage) are North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Afghanistan, and Kuwait⁵¹ — i.e., seven of the top ten countries practicing modern slavery are Muslim; the exceptions are atheist North Korea (the world’s top slaver), Eritrea, whose population is equally split between Christians and Muslims, and Orthodox Christian-majority Russia.

To which I add this chilling insight because apparently few observers have made the connection: On October 7th, when Gazan jihadis massacred or abducted (mostly) Israeli females and males from infants to the extreme elderly, they enacted on Jewish bodies atavistic rape and enslavement rituals modeled by Islam’s prophet.⁵²

But from the mayor, despite his love for speechifying, you won’t hear a whisper about Islamist imperial-colonialism or jihadi rape culture and the enslavement of captives because, in order for Mamdani and comrades to achieve their revolution, they must demonize non-Muslims as always the oppressor — and must sanitize Muslims as always the oppressed.

5 | THE WORST ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY

I am of course aware that in the wake of the October 7th jihadi massacre and abductions of (mostly) Israelis, two consecutive Irish presidents (Catherine Connolly and Michael D. Higgins), and Dublin City Council members, have expressed extremes of contempt and hostility for the Jewish people the likes of which had until October 7th not been acceptable in European public discourse since Hitler’s defeat.⁵³-⁵⁵

I also read threads, though, and so I know that many Irish people don’t share their elected officials’ callousness toward the Jewish people. This heartens me, a person who loves Ireland: the vivid colors, the people’s warmth and lack of snobbery, the lilting speech, the brilliance of Irish literature, cinema, music, and dance!

I have tried to understand why the elected leaders of the Republic of Ireland, which only recently achieved political self-determination, would make common cause with Islamists.⁵⁶

I have tried to understand why Ireland’s self-styled progressives—whose nation not long ago unyoked from the Catholic Church’s heavy-handed intrusions into every aspect of people’s private lives—would ally with Islamists who want to impose on Europeans the world’s most reactionary-theocratic system of government. I refer to Sharia law, which denies commonly agreed-upon human and civil rights to those who live under it; which surveils and controls people’s private lives; and which savagely punishes individual departures from conformity to social norms.

I have tried to understand why Ireland’s self-styled progressive women—whose forerunners even more recently have achieved hard-won legal control over their sexual and reproductive lives⁵⁷—would ally with Islam’s violent masculinists who on their home turf coercively control girls’ and women’s bodies and clothing, and who punish with honor killing any female family member alleged to have breached social or sexual decorum; who in Iran under the ayatollahs, mullahs, and the IRGC rape imprisoned female political dissidents⁵⁸ before executing them;⁵⁹ and who in southern Israel on October 7th, lethally gang-raped and sexually mutilated as many Jewish girls and women, and some boys and men, as they could lay their hands on.⁶⁰

The Falcon Cannot Hear

Yeats wrote this about the violent era in which he lived:

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

*Are full of passionate intensity.*⁶¹

I cut my teeth on those verses in college well before I could understand their truth — but in our era of resurgent Islamist, Marxist (faux-progressive), and neo-Nazi fascism, and because I live in a war zone, now I understand them deeply.

Politicians come and go, wars end, hate speech once again becomes unfashionable (!), shell-shocked populations insist that leaders return their nations to sane and moderate paths.

I write this as a long-lived person who has absorbed more than her personal share of cruelty and injustice, but till the Iranian proxy-led (Hamas-led) massacre and abductions — in the immediate wake of which were unleashed orchestrated hate mobs targeting Jewish people in the West — somehow I managed to sustain a degree of naive optimism about human beings.

My naivete and optimism are gone. I haven’t become a pessimist, but I can’t think highly of us as a species anymore — not in this era that entitles the loudest bullies to take over the public square en masse, spew hatred and incite violence, and celebrate (or excuse) jihadi barbarism.

I have become a chastened realist who lives with full, aching awareness of our flawed, fallible, belligerent species and our fractured world.

ANNOTATED FOOTNOTES

1. “Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Hosts Breakfast to Celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day.”
2. Avraham Russell Shalev, “Hamas’ October 7th Genocide: Legal Analysis and the Weaponisation of Reverse Accusations — A Study in Modern Genocide Recognition and Denial”: “The Hamas killings on October 7th were motivated by an intent to destroy Israeli Jews as a distinct ethnic, racial and national group. The specific genocidal intent can be inferred from a careful examination of Hamas’ antisemitic worldview enshrined in its foundational Covenant, the systematic anti-Jewish policies that it has advanced over decades, statements of top officials both before and during October 7th , and the existence of a specific plan to destroy Israel and its Jewish population.” Also this: “This pattern of genocide inversion serves three distinct purposes: (i) it deflects attention from Hamas’ own genocidal actions; (ii) it appropriates the moral weight of genocide accusations to delegitimise Israel’s military response; and (iii) it exploits and inverts Jewish historical trauma by comparing Israeli actions with the Nazi genocide.”
3. Ibid, citing Markos Zografos, ‘Genocidal Antisemitism: A Core Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood’, ISGAP Occasional Paper Series, No 4, June 2021, https://isgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/GenocidalAntisemitism-Markos-Zografos.pdf: “This eliminationist antisemitism is the defining feature of the Hamas ideology. It is shared by a wide range of Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) and Khomeinist Iran.”
4. “‘We are seeing an unfolding genocide in Gaza’ Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson.”
5. “Something About Mary: Durban, Antisemitism & Mary Robinson’s Role.”
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Gerald Steinberg, “[Opinion] The UN secretary-general and Mary Robinson’s Iranian debacle.”
9. “Transcript.”
10. “Transcript.”
11. Menahem Milson, “Arab and Islamic Antisemitism.”
12. “The Truth About the Zohran Mamdani Phenomenon.”
13. Alex Oliveira, “Muslims rip Mamdani’s association with controversial imam accused of terror ties: ‘Hatred for the United States.’”
14. Alex Oliveira, “Zohran Mamdani’s imam ally Siraj Wahhaj has history of vile anti-gay views: ‘Disease of this society.’”
15. “The Truth About the Zohran Mamdani Phenomenon.”
16. Steven Emerson and John Rossomando, “A Red Carpet for Radicals at the White House.”
17. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, “Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj.”
18. “The Truth About the Zohran Mamdani Phenomenon.” See also Alex Oliveira, “Muslims rip Mamdani’s association with controversial imam accused of terror ties: ‘Hatred for the United States,’” and Rich Calder, Shane Galvin and Katherine Donlevy, “Mamdani appears smiling, arm-in-arm with unindicted ’93 WTC bombing co-conspirator and terrorist apologist.”
19. “Transcript.”
20. Nia Outis, “Zohran Mamdani’s Dog-Whistle Politics: Mayor Invokes Intifada, Hijrah.”
21. “Transcript.”
22. Noga Emanuel, “‘What is your nation, if I may ask?’: Antisemitism and Zionism in James Joyce’s Ulysses”: “For the quintessential Irish antisemite, Jews can never have a legitimate claim or a place to exist as themselves. The idea of a Jewish state draws from him as much ire as the Jewish desire for assimilation. For the Citizen, Jews are irredeemably and perpetually ‘strangers in the house.’”
23. Outis, “NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji ‘Likes’ Child Abuse.”
24. W.B. Yeats, “A Prayer for my Daughter.”
25. “Transcript”: “So many Irish people came [to NYC] right throughout the generations . . . built up this great city, helped form key parts of the infrastructure, [and] in the political life . . . many Irish-Americans have . . . deliver[ed] public service to this great city . . . . When you think about . . . the Declaration of Independence, three of the 56 signatories were born on the island of Ireland . . . [and today] high-quality jobs [are] being created [in] both jurisdictions . . . [and] we are now employing over 200,000 people right across the 50 states in the US, and . . . this week . . . my department [has] announced $6.1 billion of investment over the next four years, just with three Irish companies.”
26. Raymond Pierre Hylton, ”Normans Invade Ireland.”
27. “Disappearance of the Kingdom of Judah and Exile to Babylon.”
28. “Judea Under Roman Rule (63 BCE-66 CE).”
29. Hylton, “Normans Invade Ireland.”
30. “Judea Under Roman Rule (63 BCE-66 CE)”: “The Roman general Pompey, taking advantage of an internal quarrel between two rival members of the Hasmonean royal family, conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE.” See also Miryam Zakheim, “A Jewish Game of Thrones: The Bloody Tragedy of the Hasmonean Dynasty”: “During the reign of John Hyrcanus . . . the internal rift between the different religious factions deepened . . . . the Roman general Pompey strolled into town, carrying orders to expand Rome’s territories in the East. Throughout the Hasmonean Kingdom’s history, the Romans had cast a long shadow from the West but had refrained from intervening in Judea’s internal affairs, as its rulers were wise enough to repeatedly sign peace treaties with it. This was about to change. Both Hyrcanus [II] and Aristobulus [II] now expected Pompey to judge which of the two was more deserving of ruling Judea. They travelled to see him in Damascus, as did a delegation of the Judean people, who came to ask the Roman general [to] take down the entire Hasmonean family — they’d had enough power struggles and corruption. Was this simple naivete or just a clumsy attempt at political maneuvering? Either way, Pompey’s response was one of the greatest historical demonstrations of the idiom: ‘When two are fighting, the third wins’. He quickly seized the opportunity to take over the Judean kingdom himself. He went up to Jerusalem, besieged it, and after just three months and 12,000 dead Jews, he entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Aristobulus II was imprisoned and Hyrcanus II was declared an ‘Ethnarch’ a pathetic puppet ruler on behalf of Rome. The year was 63 BCE. The Hasmonean Kingdom, the only example of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel since the biblical kingdoms (and for the next 2,000 years), had lost its independence.”
31. Hylton, “Normans Invade Ireland.”
32. “Judea Under Roman Rule” and Zakheim, “A Jewish Game of Thrones,” n30.
33. Helene O’Keeffe, “‘An end and a beginning’: the birth of the Irish Free State.”
34. John Gibney, “Up the republic! How Ireland became a republic 70 years ago.”
35. Aviva Halamish, “Israel Studies An Anthology : The Yishuv: The Jewish Community in Mandatory Palestine”: “The Yishuv featured almost all the attributes of a democratic state except sovereignty. It was organized and functioned along the lines of a parliamentary democracy and even its underground paramilitary arm, the Hagana, was subject to the control and authority of the democratically elected civil leadership. This impressed the various committees that investigated the situation in Palestine, such as the Peel Commission in 1937 and the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) ten years later. The strong institutional structure established by the Yishuv was later manifested in the smooth transfer from foreign rule to becoming an independent state in May 1948.”
36. Damien Dunne, “The Irish Language Revival: Preserving Heritage in a Modern World.”
37. “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.”
38. Michael Starr, “Ireland turns a blind eye to antisemitism as Jews grapple with rising hostility,” citing Maurice Cohen: “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish nationalism and Jewish Zionism often recognized one another as parallel movements shaped by diaspora, historical trauma, cultural revival, and resistance to British rule. This sense of affinity carried into the early decades of the Irish state.” See also Rónán McDonald, “Irish Nationalism and Zionism: A Response to Tim Lynch”: “Irish nationalist ideas were deeply influential on early Zionism and the Irish and Jewish independence movements were aligned over many decades . . . . in the 1970s and into the 1980s it was not at all uncommon for the Irish and Israeli cause to resonate together.”
39. “Transcript.”
40. “The rise of Islam — The Complete History (Full Documentary).”
41. “The Ottoman Empire: Expansion and Retreat.”
42. Robert Louis Wilken, “Christianity Face to Face with Islam”: “Most of the territories that were Christian in the year 700 are now Muslim. Nothing similar has happened to Islam. Christianity seems like a rain shower that soaks the earth and then moves on, whereas Islam appears more like a great lake that constantly overflows its banks to inundate new territory. When Islam arrives, it comes to stay — unless displaced by force, as it was in Spain . . . . In a way that is not true of Christianity, Islam is territorial. One of Islam’s most enduring innovations was that religious law became also the law of the body politic. Shari’a is more encompassing than the Church’s canon law, and historically its authority depended on a community with territorial boundaries and political jurisdiction.”
43. Eleni Tseligka, “One Hundred Years of Bloodshed: The Extermination of Christians by Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, 1822–1922”: “Ottoman Muslims felt challenged by the notion of social equality, fearing for the loss of their own privilege, [which] thus created bottom-up pressure for violence, resulting in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the majority of Ottoman Christians during the last century of the Empire.”
44. Michael Coren, “Islam’s War on Christianity”: “Christians are the most persecuted identifiable group in the world, and while two of the twenty most oppressive countries for Christians are non-Muslim — one is, obviously, North Korea where everybody lives in a metaphorical prison — the overwhelming dynamic is one of Islamic subjugation of the Christian minority.”
45. Hillel Frisch, “The Return of Imperialism: The Islamic Republic of Iran”: “Instead of the triumph of liberal visions of globalization, which include the dismemberment of imperial powers, we are seeing the return of imperialism in the form of Iran’s violent foreign interventions.” Also doomscroll MEMRI.org, which features spokesmen for the Iranian regime and proxies’ openly declaring their global expansionist designs.
46. Outis, “‘What Is Israel Supposed To Do?’ And Other Disingenuous Questions”: “The caliphate (empire) envisioned by the ayatollahs would replace the State of Israel with a so-called Palestinian state that in fact would be an Iranian imperial — and military — outpost. The prototype for such dusty outposts bristling with 21st-century armaments is what you’re really seeing today when you see Iran’s: using proxy Hamas to control Gaza and militarily target Israel; using proxy Hezbollah to destabilize the elected Lebanese government, control southern Lebanon, and militarily target Israel; using the Houthis to overpower Yemen’s elected government, control the capital Sanaa and northern Yemen, and . . . militarily target Israel while threatening global trade and destabilizing the entire Middle East.”
47. Ian Mitchell, “The history of Islamic slavery should be better known,” reviewing Captives And Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi: “[M]ost of those who protest against imperialism are those who are closest in spirit to the slave-owning bureaucracy of modern Mauritania which conceals barbarity behind a virtuous façade of ex-underdog liberation”; “When the Janjaweed militias attacked the inhabitants of Darfur in 2003, they ‘would enter the village of an African tribe, kill all the men and rape the women, mocking them afterwards with age-old racial slur: “You should celebrate, you slave. You are going to give birth to an Arab.’””
48. Editor@oldmooresalmanac.com, “Irish Slaves: The Night Ireland Was Raided for the Human Trade,” re the 1631 sack of Baltimore: “From the late 1400s onwards, slave raiding became common across Europe. Muslim corsairs (pirates) operating from ports like Algiers and Salé regularly attacked coastal towns, seizing Christians and selling them into slavery. These raids reached as far north as Iceland . . . . In Algiers, the [Irish] captives were paraded, chained and stripped, while buyers inspected them. Men were beaten, tortured and forced into hard labour or galley slavery. Women were highly prized and often sold as concubines. Children were taken from their parents, converted to Islam, and raised to serve the Ottoman state or wealthy households . . . . Ransoms were possible, but expensive. And the English government had decided not to pay. Within two years, officials reported that most of the Baltimore captives were dead or had ‘turned Turk’, meaning they had converted and assimilated to survive.”
49. Theresa D. Murray, “From Baltimore to Barbary: the 1631 sack of Baltimore”: “[The Irish villagers] were wrested from their beds by strange men speaking an unknown language . . . . In Algiers, [English consul James] Frizell . . . requested funds to pay for their release. These funds were not forthcoming, owing to the English government’s newly adopted policy of not paying ransoms, as it was believed that to do so would encourage the taking of hostages and act as a disincentive to sailors to defend their ships. Detainees were immediately taken to the basha, an official who had a right to ten per cent of all booty, including slaves. The rest of the captives, with men and women segregated, would have been sent to slave pens. There they were paraded, chained and nearly naked, while prospective buyers inspected the merchandise. Those not sold in the initial auction were housed in storage facilities or bagnios — large, unsanitary blocks that supplied casual, and expendable, labour on a contract basis. Children had usually been removed from their families by this point and a process of acculturation had begun . . . . [The captive Irish were] pawns in a global power game that had been played between Islam and Christianity since the eighth century.”
50. “St Patrick: Ireland’s Most Celebrated Immigrant.”
51. “Global Slavery Index.”
52. Edward D. Andrews, “Slavery in the Quran: Why Allah Permits Sexual Slavery and the Taking of Captives Forever,” citing Quran 4:24, 23:5–6, 33:50, and 70:29–30: “The Quran. . . makes slave ownership and concubinage [i.e., female sexual slavery] part of Allah’s legal order . . . . The most important Quranic phrase in this discussion is ma malakat aymanukum, commonly translated ‘those whom your right hands possess’ . . . . In Islamic theology, Muhammad’s conduct is not treated as the behavior of a morally flawed ancient ruler . . . . He is treated as the messenger and example . . . . This is why classical Muslim jurists . . . recognized concubinage as lawful . . . . They drew [the doctrine] from the Quran’s language, the example attributed to Muhammad, and the inherited legal tradition.”
53. “Irish President-Elect Catherine Connolly Faces Backlash Over Anti-Israel Record”: “Connolly has repeatedly called Israel a ‘terrorist state’ and a ‘rogue state,’ and has dismissed global outrage over the October 7th Hamas massacre, declaring that ‘history didn’t begin on October 7.’ She has also described Hamas as ‘part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,’ a statement that has been criticized for downplaying Hamas’s brutality and genocidal campaign against the Jewish state . . . . Alan Shatter, a lawyer and former minister of justice and defense, sharply criticized Connolly’s record. ‘Catherine Connolly personifies the Irish Left and Sinn Fein’s anti-Israel hostility and embraces its narrative, counting amongst her political supporters those who advocate Israel’s replacement by a Palestinian state.’”
54. Jonathan Lieberman, “Ireland must reevaluate its approach to Israel and Jews — opinion.”
55. “When Does Anti-Israel Rhetoric Become Antisemitic? Dublin Demonstrates.”
56. See Ron Kampeas, “Why Ireland is so staunchly pro-Palestinian: ‘We see our history in their eyes’”: “Irish people who back the Palestinians often ground their sympathies in the perception that both peoples were, or are, colonized — the Irish by the United Kingdom, and the Palestinians by Israel”; Michael Starr, “Ireland turns a blind eye to antisemitism as Jews grapple with rising hostility,” citing Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder and Jewish Representative Council of Ireland chairman Maurice Cohen, respectively: “[They have] an extremely one-sided understanding of Israel-Palestine”; “Ireland’s relationship with the Jewish people and later with the State of Israel developed through recognition, divergence, and increasing strain rather than through any single rupture”; and Rónán McDonald, “Irish Nationalism and Zionism: A Response to Tim Lynch”: “You can criticize Ireland for naïve idealism, for moral self-congratulation, for too readily taking on a progressive orthodoxy, for not listening well to its EU partners and for under-recognising the eliminationist imperialism of Israel’s adversaries.”
57. L. Kelly, “The Contraceptive Pill in Ireland c.1964–79: Activism, Women and Patient-Doctor Relationships.”
58. Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, “Surviving Rape in Iran’s Prisons.”
59. “‘Properly insane’: Douglas Murray on Ayatollah Khomeini.”
60. Cochav Elkayam-Levy et al., SILENCED NO MORE: Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages In Captivity.
61. W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.”

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