Mary Robinson at World Economic Forum, Davos, 2013 Rubberstamping the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement’s drive to delegitimate and demonize “Apartheid” Israel, the Irish government has announced that produce from the West Bank should be declared “illegal” by the EU. Giving their blessing on a Dublin visit were the so-called “Elders,” the seven-member “peace-making” delegation that includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and former Irish President Mary Robinson. The Elders have gotten older but no wiser since their founding in 2007. They continue to focus all their criticism for Mideast ills on Israel—ignoring Hamas and Hezbollah—at a time when chemical weapons are being used in Syria and “wipe Israel from the map” Iran continues on track to develop a nuclear weapon. Irish developments matter for two reasons. First, the nexus with former President Robinson who was the moving force behind 2001’s Durban “Anti-Racism” Conference held just days before the 9/11 attacks. Durban’s main impact was to revive the UN’s discredited 1975 resolution equating “Zionism with racism” while legitimizing the use of “all means”—including terrorism—to destroy the Jewish state. Robinson failed to deliver on her promise to the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the Iranian government would provide visas to the official Israeli delegates and Jewish NGO representatives, in accordance with UN rules, to the “prepcon summit” in Tehran that instead made impossible participation by Jewish NGOs (as well as the Bahá’ís) and refused to denounce anti-Semitism. She then also presided over the Durban hatefest—where the delegation headed by the Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Dr. Shimon Samuels protested the widespread distribution of copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”—waiting until the Conference was almost over before admitting that “there was horrible anti-Semitism present.” Later, she backtracked on her admission by issuing a declaration that she was still “proud” of the event. In addition, she has accused Israel’s supporters at home and abroad of “bullying”—in charges echoing libels against “The Israel Lobby.” The second reason is that Sein Fein—the political wing of the IRA (and vice versa)—has aligned with radical Palestinian nationalism since the 1970s and called for the expulsion of Israel’s Ambassador to Ireland since the 1990s. But this shameful history goes back further. As Andrew McCarthy’s and Dermot Keogh’s book shows, Sein Fein’s founder, Arthur Griffith, supported the Limerick Pogrom and boycott of “Jewish usurers” in 1904. Francis Stewart—pro-Nazi during World War II—was elected head of a government-funded arts group boycotting Israel in 1996. Sean Russell, another Nazi collaborator, had a statue dedicated to him in 2004. Irish President (or Taoiseach) Éamon de Valera signed the book of condolence on Hitler’s death, despite his prewar friendship with Chief Rabbi of Ireland Isaac Herzog (later, first Chief Rabbi of Israel), his pro-Allied sympathies during the war, and his ineffectual efforts to save some Jewish refugees. Before the war, only 60 to 7O Jewish refugees were admitted. After the war, Belgian Fascist leader Leon Degrelle and members of Pavlevic’s brutal Croatian government entered Ireland—while Jewish admissions were minimal until 1948 when de Valera overrode opposition to bring in some 150 Jewish refugee children. Irish President John Bruton finally apologized for Irish government wartime and postwar “failure” and “indifference” in 1995. In terms of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hatred, the past in Ireland is prologue to the present. On the sixtieth anniversary celebration of Israel Independence in 2008, a crowd cursed and spat upon guests to the event as “dirty Jews.” In 2009—after the Israeli Ambassador tried to explain the reasons for Operation Cast Lead in Gaza—MP Aengus O’Snodaigh described him as “Goebbels” and Israel as “without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet.” 2010’s so-called “Gaza Peace Flotilla”—featuring axe-wielding pacifists—included an Irish-dedicated vessel named the Rachel Corrie. Today, Ireland’s anti-Israel one-two punch consists, on the one hand, of Trócaire—a large, government-funded charity—headed by Justin Kilcullen who leads the charge for anti-Israel sanctions and the Palestinians’ “right of return” while casting a blind eye to the crimes committed by Islamist terrorists against Israeli civilians. On the other hand is the well-funded Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) which, as Rob Harris has ably documented, sells Christmas cards of the Madonna and Child in a Palestinian flag and of the Three Wise Men being blocked by the “Apartheid Wall.” The most formidable barrier blocking Israeli-Palestinian peace in our time is the Wall of willful ignorance and prejudice facilitated by Mary Robinson’s fellow anti-Israel Elders. History gave the Irish reasons for hating the British. There is no excuse for Ireland’s nonstop Israel bashing.