Central Bank of Ireland confirms it will no longer approve sale of Israeli ‘war bonds’

Of course British people have their bias too. We come at it from very different angles given our very different histories. 43% of British people think that the British Empire is something to be proud of, completely untroubled by the Amritsar massacre, the concentration camps during the Boer war and after the Mau Mau uprising, the post-partition violence in India caused by uprooting 10 million people, and the four million deaths from famine in Bengal while Churchill diverted grain to British troops etc etc. Only 21% think it's something that the UK should regret.

Of course the people of Britain and the people of Ireland are going to think differently on this topic. That's before you get into the more recent history of bombing and invading Middle Eastern countries vs an almost 50 year peace mission in the Middle East.

Im sure you are sincere in what you think.

I do believe we all have unconscious bias though (including me of course).

I certainly don’t think it’s superior to be against the indiscriminate killing, starvation and maiming of thousands of civilians.

The UK population is getting there… I’m not… Must be good to feel superior!

I think maybe a lot of our posts on this matter have gone over your head.

But short answer is yes. I mean the UK population is getting there….it’s getting harder and harder to brush off concerns with an insistence that the messengers just hate Jewish people.

No they wouldn’t support the theory but they don’t represent all pensioners or English people. Taken as a whole, English pensioners could still be more likely to support Israel than Irish pensioners.

@GladioliGreen says it isn’t any secret that Ireland is one of the most pro Palestinian countries in the world so the flip side to that would be a more negative attitude to Israel I guess since they have been in conflict for so long.

Well yes it isn't any secret that Ireland is one of the most pro Palestinian countries in the world. That's why there have been multiple articles written explaining why.

Well either you do or I will 😀

Why would I know much about religion in Ireland when I’m English? I wouldn’t but it’s an interesting thought that whether we are pro Pal or support Israel may be partly connected to whether we are English or Irish (unconscious bias).

It gets really frustrating people waging on about religion in Ireland when they clearly have no knowledge of Irish culture or life. It would be like me looking at the news, reading social media and deciding that the reason more people in the UK support Israel is because more of you are anti Islam. I wouldn't have to search back a 100 years to find 1000s of examples of Islamaphobia in the UK.

Have you not read any of the many posts here that explain this? Someone posted this article earlier. There are loads of similar articles that explain the history of Ireland and Palestine and as the article puts it the same cast of colonial characters.

www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1233395830/ireland-pro-palestinian

Anyone with any knowledge of Ireland would know that they are looking in the wrong place. Young people are more likely to want a United Ireland than their older counterparts. The dogs in the street could tell you that that's where these 'researchers' should be looking rather than the 15% of young people that regularly attend religious services.

Interesting though that you’re both Irish @PaxAeterna & @Everexpanding and also @Martymcfly24 from previous conversations.

Im not suggesting that everyone in Ireland is antisemitic of course or that you are as individuals . But it occurs to me that Irish people seem more staunchly pro Palestinian on these threads and I wonder if English people - speaking very generally- tend to err more towards being Israel supporters.

Oh yes that’s what it must be 🤣

Honestly. It’s cobblers. they don’t have an understanding of what they are talking about.

You’re just one person though. The survey found what it found with a bigger sample than one.

Most adults in Ireland describe themselves as Christian. This is meaningless with regards to actually knowing the bible or even attending mass. It means they celebrate births; deaths; communions and marriages in the traditional way - with a church and lots of fanfare. The “researchers” have gone looking in the wrong place.

I had a deeply religious education. Of the type that no longer exists in Ireland really. And nobody ever mentioned to me that Jesus was killed by the Jews or about supersessionism. Jesus and all the first followers of Christianity were Jewish.

A November 2024 report by the education monitoring group IMPACT-se found that textbooks used in Irish schools included profound distortions of the Holocaust, Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history.

IMPACT-se has exceptionally high standards. This is a good thing and we should always strive to do better when educating the young. However, I don’t think errors in textbooks should automatically be seen as coming from a place of anti-semitism.

As an example, the report included objections to a sentence in a LC textbook which referred to the Halocaust as “a systematic destruction of the Jewish race” (iirc). That statement was found to be offensive for a number of reasons. I was surprised by how offensive it was considered, but I had to assume I was wrong to be surprised by this. So I read up on it and I now understand the objections (to the word race, and to the minimisation of the Holocaust by using the word destruction rather than genocide).

My point is I think intent is important.
In the case mentioned above I doubt it was a deliberate ‘profound distortion’ iyswim. I know I learnt about the horrors of the Holocaust at school in Ireland.
Yes, we get things wrong sometimes when it comes to textbooks and should of course be corrected. That is to be welcomed.
But I don’t think people should infer that Irish textbook authors/Irish society are anti-semitic from these sorts of mistakes.

The survey is about the attitudes of Christian adults.

This is complete nonsense. So young people (who are generally not religious at all) are more influenced by what their “pastors and religious leaders” say than the older generation (who are much more likely to be religious here)

I can guarantee you that the average person on the street has never even heard of supersessionism.

It’s honestly completely bizarre. Makes no sense at all. I think the researchers assume that under 65’s in Ireland are active catholics who go to mass regularly.