 Hello, friends and subscribers. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal as usual, bringing you this video today from Jerusalem. So I'm doing a few videos lately about the Irish reaction to Israel. A lot of it is quite hostile and people have pointed out. There is also pockets of support for Israel in Ireland. And one of the most active Twitter users in the Irish Twitter sphere speaking out on behalf of Israel is a gentleman that we have on here today. His name is Kiron Orahalig. Kiron, thank you very much for for coming on and being being the stand up pro-Israel person in Ireland for today. One of many. So let's maybe kind of just start there because you say one of many and the perception from Israel, as I'm sure you know, is that it's very, very anti. But I've heard the theory for quite a while that there is more pro-Israel support or people who are sort of more neutral than meets the eye. What do you have to say about that? It's definitely more than you see on social media. I would understand anybody looking at Irish Twitter thinking that the vast majority of Irish people were very anti-Israel. But, you know, the opinion polls don't really bear that out. There was one opinion poll recently from the Sunday Independent that unfortunately I don't have the exact figures anymore, but now behind the paywall. I think it was something like, OK, it was 51% said the favored Palestine or Palestinians and it was only about 10% favored Israel or supported Israel in this conflict. But that left something like what, 39% who were quite nuanced in their view and to the point of view that they didn't really feel like supporting either side. And that same opinion poll also showed that 66% of Irish people support Hamas being prescribed as a terrorist organization. Unsurprisingly enough, even the majority of Shinfelns support Hamas being prescribed as a terrorist organization. So you don't see that coming out on Twitter. You know, at best you would see particularly from politicians like people from people from people before profit. If they they probably won't condemn Hamas at all. And to do its very, very kind of perfunctory and fleeting. So I think people's views are somewhat more nuanced than social media would want to believe. I think it's important to remember that the kind of people who come onto Twitter for both sides, from both sides of the from both perspectives, including the people who are, let's say, more pro-Israel or probably more towards the margins in their in their viewpoints than the average person might be. That's in. Yes, that's a very good point. Actually, you remind me of another thing I wanted to say. A few universities here have what's the student unions in certain in some universities have held referendums in the last few years and voted for BDS, devoted to Bicol-Israel and it's absolutely no effect whatsoever. Because it's not within their remit to decide the university's purchasing policy. But when these referendums are held, OK, they might be passed by 60 or 70 percent of the voters, but the voters are maybe only eight to 10 percent of the entire student body. So 90 percent plus of the students. You know, the students would tend to be the most angry. I think the most inclined to take a black and white view of a particular viewpoint and 90 percent of the student body just are bothered enough to vote on this particular issue. So, Kiran, speaking about the whole kind of Israel conflict, and there there was a great documentary that came out of years ago from an Irish guy called Nicky Larkin called 40 Sades of Grey. But I think sums sums it up really well that it's really not there's a conflict where there's definitely some degree of wrong doing on both sides, and it's not black and white. And neither side is either the angel or the devil. So what's your stance on kind of broadly speaking? What's what's your take on the whole the whole conflict and what we're seeing going on now with with the Gaza conflict? I would tend to put it in the same context as various other. Border disputes or, you know, conflicts between different ethnicities and nationalities that finally came to a kind of a crisis in the late 1940s. You know, you had all across Eastern Europe, you had borders being withdrawn, people moving whether by choice or being forced to move. There was it was a drive towards creating nation states that were far more ethically homogeneous. So I think Polo meant from being 55 percent Polish to 95 percent Polish Ukrainians moved from the southeastern Poland into Ukraine or maybe the border was not pretty sure. But anyway, you basically had a lot of stuff going on where people were just moving around or being forced to move. And you also had India and Pakistan, of course. You had, you know, when India was partitioned, Muslims moved to the new Pakistan state. Where there was East Pakistan and West Pakistan, Sikhs and Hindus moved to India. They were refugees and like the Poles and the Ukrainians and the Romanian and the Hungarians, they moved to the new place, they settled down and by and large, nobody considered them to be refugees now. In the context of the issue of the Palestine issue. OK, yeah, six or seven hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced. Some fled, some were told to go by their leaders because the leaders felt that the invading armies, the invading Arab armies were just wiped out the Jews and then the Palestinians could come back. But we have to also remember that. There are I think something like nine hundred thousand Jewish refugees were forced to leave our own Islamic countries and they tend to be forgotten in all this. And they most of them, I think, moved to Israel, where they now settle down and nobody considers them to be refugees. So like taking this in the context of Polish people forced to move, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Romanians, Indian, Hindus, Pakistani, Muslims, Jews, fleeing Arab countries. Only the Palestinians are still considered to be refugees. Only other people moved to their new country. It wasn't just, it wasn't fair. They lost a lot of property and land and whatever. But they moved and nobody considers them now to be refugees. So that's one way in which I would look at it, that only the Palestinians seem to inherit this state of being refugee from generation to generation. And I find myself wondering about that. Why is what's interesting, Kieron, from what you're saying, is that you see parallels between this conflict here in Israel and border conflicts you set in Europe and in different parts of the world. But you don't draw a parallel between Ireland's experience of British colonialism, which is what's most commonly cited as the reason for pro-Palestinian sympathies in Ireland. So why is it that you don't see that as being applicable in this case? I see no parallels at all. For one thing, Irish nationalism and even the IRA, even though they were, they were not genocidal. I mean, they never wanted to wipe out the British state. They never wanted to wipe out all Protestants in Northern Ireland. And that's just the most extreme version of Irish nationalism. Irish nationalism was actually quite constitutional. And it got a state. It settled down trying to make the best of the state. And it didn't. I think there are some of the laws where maybe honest and pathetic towards Protestant minority, but there are no specifically anti-Proliacan laws. There are no laws specifically radiating Protestants to secondary states. I mean, definitely, there are laws that support the Catholic position a bit too much. But there was nothing in comparison to the kind of laws, you know, the Demi-States laws that we have seen in Islamic countries oppressing Jews and Muslims, just like Jews and Christians. So I don't really see any parallels. I think that Palestinian nationalism is a quite different, quite different thing. So, Kiron, I'm just interested in how you went about kind of forming your viewpoints about Israel and becoming informed about this conflict. You mentioned that you were over here on a visit in 2019, but how did you sort of get interested in this in this conflict and get informed about what's happening here? I suppose it goes back to when I was a school, a school we did a lot of at the Holocaust. It was covered a lot in the curriculum. And I was struck by how there was nobody to speak for the Jews. They didn't have their own state. There was nobody to sit at international conferences or at the League of Nations to tumble tables and saying, this can't be happening, this is wrong. So they were just left on their own. And, you know, I can see parallels today with the unfortunate Kurds or the Rohingya in Myanmar or even those African ethnic groups in Darfur who were currently being slaughtered by Arab militias and nobody is paying any attention at all. You really need, every ethnic group really needs to have their own state. And it's also the kind of a recognition thing. If you have your own state, then suddenly you become a more substantial thing, like you're in the Olympics, you're playing other nations in soccer or basketball, whatever you're in your vision. You know, you become a recognisable thing. So people can relate to you if somebody attacks Switzerland or Sweden or Ireland or whatever, people will be able to point to that straight away and say, oh, yeah, that's there, you know, they're on the map. Whereas the Kurds aren't on the map. They're just a kind of a blob in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, northeastern Iraq. People, people watching this would say, well, the Palestinians also deserve self determination and to have their own state. What would you, what do you think about that? Well, they were offered their own state on numerous occasions. In the late 1940s, they could have had it. There are various occasions. I think it was in 2008, I think, was it Ehud Almert or Ehud Barak? I think it was Ehud Almert offered them pretty much all of the West Bank and even even was offering a little bit extra so that the Palestinians in both areas could go back and say, we've got the equivalent area of the West Bank. And I mean, in fairness, they do have, you know, small, but they do have the Gaza Strip already. And what are they doing with it? They're just using it to attack Israel. Hamas is not interested in the well-being of the Gaza people. Hamas is only interested in destroying Israel. So they, I would argue that they already have a portion of a state and they're not making much of it. They're not, okay, I don't, the ordinary Gazans don't really have much choice in terms of who's ruling them. But their leaders are not interested in the betterment of the Gazan people. It's on a stage that for the improvement of the lives of Gazan, it's a state that's being used as a weapon against Israel and only for that. A lot of people cure on in the pro-Israel community in Ireland would feel that the Irish media is very hostile towards Israel and has been for quite some time. But I see there's some new platforms coming on the scene like grip.ai which I gather is somewhat controversial. Would I just be interested as someone who's, let's say, more pro-Israel than perhaps your average person in Ireland? What do you think of the mainstream media, RTE, etc. as they're presenting the conflict and do you get your news from other sources or how do you feel about all this? I think the mainstream media in Ireland is generally hostile towards Israel. It's something we have to constantly chase them about in terms of inaccuracies that they put up and sometimes you wonder, sometimes they will correct things. Sometimes you wonder if the era was intentional or just unintentional. I mean, in the Irish, in New Zealand, the Irish time, the Irish independent opinion pieces that are anti-Israel, vastly have numbered ones that are pro-Israel. And it's a struggle to get a letter published that is pro-Israel. I've had a little bit of success recently and so have some of this. But on any given day, the letters will be 3 to 1 anti-Israel or 4 to 1 anti-Israel. And they might say, well, we're only reflecting, you know, the editors might say we're only affecting the volume of mail, that maybe the mail coming in is 3 to 1 anti-Israel or 4 to 1. But it's not really their role. It should not be given slightly more equal, more of a balance, despite the fact that things may be slanted in one particular way. Yeah, presenting both viewpoints kind of more equally. So, Kieran, just interest. I mean, you're quite vocal on Twitter in terms of your support for Israel. And as we both know, the Irish Twitter sphere can be pretty hostile to these type of viewpoints. So just wondering, firstly, how you kind of handle that. And secondly, in the more important sphere called real life with your friends and family, do you ever get into discussions about Israel? And what do they make of your online activism? As regards dealing with abuse on Twitter, I just, it makes me laugh a lot at the time because it's so formulaic. I mean, you get this kind of a world soap of genocide, apartheid, colonialism, all this stuff. It's like they've swallowed in a BDS leaflet and they're just regurgitating, regurgitating whole paragraphs from it. I mean, my family and friends know how I feel. They don't know so much about my online activism. I don't really go into that detail with them about it. But yeah, we do have arguments every now and again. I think the arguments are amical. They I think, by and large, they would be like a lot of Irish people. They would tend to see lots of Palestinians dying. So therefore, Palestinians are the underdogs. Therefore, Palestinians are the good guys. And when we get down to that kind of level of argument, I know the obvious retort is, well, would you be happier if more Israelis just had the good grace to just drop dead? And even up a score? So in fairness, I'm the one who's read all the books and I have all the facts at hand, whereas David, you're just kind of reacting to the latest story. So it's I have to, what am I trying to say? I have to kind of not just not to give them a blizzard of facts because I think that might be just too much and maybe they might actually resent being, you know, bombarded with all this stuff. I try to aim it more at the heart and say, well, you know, what do you think Israel should do? And also, actually, one one thing and it's something I keep banging on about the the story of the Jewish refugees from Arab and Islamic countries that tend not to get told. And when people hear that to realise, OK, you know, there is more to this story than one side, you know, there wasn't only, there wasn't just one bunch of refugees. That's something you have to keep reminding people of. But by and large, I mean, you say the arguments, we have, we have arguments, but the arguments don't get hostile. And going back to going back to 2019, and I mentioned when I told people I was going to Israel, 99 percent of the responses were positive and curious. There's one guy at work, one colleague said, tell them to get the effort of Palestine. I'm fair enough, I didn't take the base. But the vast majority of people, friends and family were interested and they were interested when they came back and they wanted to know, do you see this, do you see that? What about this, what about that? And it wasn't, you know, there wasn't any hostility there. It was just genuine curiosity. Yeah, I had quite a number of people come over from Ireland when I got married here a few years ago and, you know, people who I think had never conceived of coming to Israel before. A lot of people had had a really good time, but one of my friends has really kind of fallen into that anti-Israel camp. And we did, I just want to say about falling out of France. I think it's an interesting question for folks. Maybe it's perhaps a little bit more personal when you're living in the middle of this conflict, but we did have something of a falling out because, you know, he's tweeting about Israel being genocidal and, you know, just ethnic cleansing and kind of all the stuff almost from Richard Boyd Barrett's little book or pamphlet, as you called it, you know, and I said, well, if you think I'm living in a genocidal country, why would you come and patronize the economy for, you know, when I got married? So I find there is kind of a red line, but most people are, you know, I think I'm very wary of echo chambers. And I think just having sort of healthy debate with the other side is useful as well. Something else that I've kind of observed on Twitter is that people seem to assume that either side is just, you know, 100 percent partisan, like a few people tweeting at me today with photos of dead, dead Gazans, you know, horrible photos that I'm sure you see as well. And they said, well, what do you make of that? And I think the implication is, you know, you guys are genocidal subhumans, and this is what you're looking for. So I tried to write back kind of a rational response that this is a war and nobody on the Israeli side is looking for dead pictures of dead children or dead children, but that this is what happens in an armed conflict, especially in the Gaza Strip that is chock full of people, etc. So there's definitely it's very polarized in the in the Twitter sphere. And that kind of, for instance, I remind people of the Allied bombing of Germany in 1945, like they say, all the Israeli's camp of armed gas, Israel is trying to commit genocide. And I know, of course, that's so horrible. But as I said, it is a war, a war that Israel didn't start. And, you know, the the Allies killed more people bombing Dresden in two nights in February 1945 than Israel has in several weeks of the war in Gaza. So, you know, it obviously isn't genocide. It is. It is a war, as you say. Unfortunately, people die, particularly when one of the combatants hides himself amongst the civilian population. And, crucially, nobody nobody applied the same standards or even today would apply the same standards to the Allies. Nobody would look back today and say, oh, the Allies can make a war crimes or the Allies shouldn't have both the head of the ceasefire. Nobody would ever say that today. So why are they applying this much higher standard to Israel? So, Kieron, there's been this sort of international controversy that I had a role, maybe in kicking off regarding Richard Boyd Barrett talking about, you know, that there should be an intifada. And, you know, he's obviously just kind of a pinup hater of Israel. But something I'm always interested in is kind of thinking who's the opposite to that, right? I mean, he's a very marginal figure in Irish politics, but you have Sinn Fein, who are less marginal and, you know, potentially you're going to get a lot more votes in the next election. So, you know, when when we're looking in the doll and in the shanad for people who are really kind of standing up to the anti-Israel sentiment and taking on the likes of Merilio McDonald, Richard Boyd Barrett, Paul Murphy and all those kind of, let's say, agitators on the left. Do you think there is any kind of a pushback at the moment in the Iraqis? Not an awful lot. There's one senator of our senator, Nero Sonevan, who is pro-Israel and he's a very brave voice. Apart from that, I think there is an Iraqis Friends of Israel group, but I'm not really sure that they do an awful lot. They seem to be, they seem to spend a lot of time in the closet. I mean, you would find the main government leaders pushing back on some of the more extreme rhetoric. You know, Leo Veradkar and Miha Maret would tend to distance themselves from the more extreme rhetoric. And a few months ago, when there was a report from Amnesty International about accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, Miha Maret actually said that he wouldn't use that term and he didn't find the term helpful. So, you know, but still at the same time, he has issued some very harsh criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza. So, I mean, apart from Senator Nero Sonevan, there isn't really anybody you can point to and say that they are supportive or understanding of Israel's position. It's kind of, it's degrees of opposition. You know, Leo Veradkar and Miha Maret did very strongly condemn Hamas in the first few days after the October 7th attacks, but then very quickly moved into the usual, attacking Israel, kind of speeches and comments. And everyone again, they would say, oh, of course we condemn Hamas, but, but, but. So, yeah, there's not much there really, apart from Senator Nero Sonevan, there isn't really much in terms of pushback, unfortunately. From your experience, Karan, of knowing other folks, I presume you know people in the pro-Israel movement in Ireland or people who might share, you know, broadly speaking your viewpoint about this. What kind of people, you know, what does Irish support for Israel look like? Where does it come from? You know, is there any kind of common characteristics or demographic you can point to for this group? There really isn't. In the group, I mean, there's a wide variety of backgrounds and classes and ages and your different geographic locations around the country. It'll give me a lot of them are in Dublin, but then a lot of Irish people are in Dublin anyway. I don't know if a quarter of a population lives in Dublin. No, I can't think of any particular characteristics of what unites us all. So, Kiran, I've heard from a lot of people that there was this turning point in maybe sort of, perhaps even the 1970s when, you know, around the time when Israel was founded, that Ireland was actually kind of quite supportive as a whole of Israel. Were you around back then? Or, you know, have you heard that story as well? And can you tell me exactly when that turning point occurred in public sentiment? I was around then. I'm old enough to have vague memories of the young people of war in 1973. And I mean, I don't remember the exact conversations amongst parents and family, but I think I get a general sense that there was a kind of a nervousness about, you know, will Israel survive or will Israel be overrun? Because obviously for the first few days, Israel was caught completely unawares and the Egyptians were making major advances across the Sinai Peninsula. So I do remember those conversations. I think the Lebanon, the situation in Lebanon might have started being a turning point. There was one politician called Lenin. Oh my God, I can't even give his Russian name now. He was a Minister for Defence. Brian Lenin, we're Brian Lenin. You know, I'm talking about Brian Lenin, senior, not Brian Lenin, junior. Brian Lenin, senior was Minister for Defence back in the late 70s, early 80s. And the Irish Army where the Irish Army was in sort of Lebanon acting as a peacekeeping force, the unifilm. And he mentioned that as being a point when he started to kind of move away from being pro-Israel and more pro-Palestinian it was around that time that a lot of Irish soldiers were being shot by the South Lebanon Army and some of their proxies that were released ostensibly backed by Israel. So, and Tinky went there a few times and felt that he wasn't impressed by the behaviour of the Israeli Army. So that might be the turning point. But it was also the IRA. The IRA had close ties with the PLO and they would have started to agitate for Palestinianism and Palestinian nationalism. I mean, the Northern Ireland issue definitely has had its effects. I mean, it's kind of a chicken and egg situation in Northern Ireland. I'm not sure whether the Northern Ireland community was pro-Israel or the IRA and the Nationalists decided to be pro-Palestine or whether the IRA decided to be pro-Palestine and then the Protestant Union and the Israeli community decided to be pro-Israel. But that has had its effects as well. That would have changed some minds to be more anti-Israel. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the peacekeepers as being a contributor. I've heard from a lot of people that's sort of the experience of unifilm people turn opinions. But I had a few conversations over the years here with peacekeepers who were deployed to not just unifilm, UNSO as well, which is another one of the UN missions and seemed to have quite a nuanced and rounded understanding of the conflict. I definitely didn't get the... I didn't form the impression that they were sort of overwhelmingly anti-Israel. So that interests me. But I guess, as you say, there's more than one factor play changing public opinion. It would be great to get those stories out. I don't mean necessarily identifying the people, but just to hear from them, because we're interested to hear what their view might be because they were upfront and close to the whole thing. Kieran, another sort of thing that comes up a lot here is this idea that Ireland is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. And as you know, I'm a Jewish person who was born in Ireland and I certainly did encounter a couple of pockets of anti-Semitism. But I've made the point before that there is anti-X feeling in pretty much every country. And I personally disagree with this idea that Ireland is a country kind of drenched in anti-Semitism, which is the sort of opinion that a lot of people seem to be putting out there on Twitter. As someone who's living in Ireland, I'm not. What's your take on all this question? Well, as somebody who's not Jewish, I mean, I'm nervous about making any wild claims. I've seen some polls saying that 77% of people would be happy to have a Jewish person in the family and 90% would be happy to have a Jewish person as a colleague. But I still believe 20% who wouldn't like to have a Jewish person in the family and 10% who wouldn't be happy to have a Jewish person as a colleague. So a Jewish person coming to work in an Irish company, potentially one person in every 10, doesn't want to have to around. So it's not a comfortable position to be in. But what I want to take issue with is the idea that Ireland is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. I don't think we are. I think levels of anti-Semitism here compared to even other Western European countries are actually fairly low. And then East European countries, anti-Semitism there really is quite high. So I'm not trying to gaslight anyone. I know I'm not Jewish, so I'm never going to experience the feeling of being the one Jewish person in an office or whatever. But it's just the specific claim that Ireland is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. I would tend to contest that. I'm going to leave as well for people interested in learning more about this. A link in the description because I think you told me, Kiron, about some interesting survey that was done by the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, and they kind of asked a few questions to try to gauge the level of anti-Semitism in a particular country. And they looked at Ireland's sort of overall rating on their barometer, whatever they call it. And it was relatively towards the lower end of Europe and actually Greece, which I think a lot of people be surprised. And I don't want to kind of just take pop shots at any one country, but came out a lot significantly higher than Ireland. So I think there's even data there to kind of contest that idea that Ireland is some kind of a hotbed of anti-Semitic sentiment I've highlighted Richard Boyd Barrett. People have told me he's marginal and I've said I agree, but I think he does make anti-Semitic discourse. So, you know, it certainly exists. But that is very different than saying that it's, you know, that's a viewpoint shared by a majority of Irish society. And anyway, that's my personal take on the matter. Yeah, I think Richard Boyd Barrett, if he has any self-critical faculties at all, he looked at the camera, he looked at that video from last weekend and realized that he just made a bit of a fool of himself. I think you might have finally gotten a little half a step too far, or maybe even a full step. It would be good to see more criticism, but to give me Hall-Martin credit, he did, and I don't think when he was presented with what Richard Boyd Barrett said, I got the feeling that he hadn't seen the tape, which is almost, people have said it's a bit Hitler-esque the way Boyd Barrett was ranting. But, you know, he did at least give some pushback, saying that that kind of rhetoric isn't helpful calling for an intifada. It's obviously a separate debate that I understand is very much top of mind in Ireland at the moment, as to what this new hate speech legislation would and would not cover. But he certainly skirted that question. All right, Kieran, so it was amazing to chat to you. You're very much a Twitter man from what I know about you, or ex as it's now being called. So people want to follow you on that platform. What's your what's your handle? It's a slightly unusual one. It's Wascurito. That's W-A-S-C-U-R-I-T-O. I won't bore you with the long description or long story, but how I came up with that. But that's it anyway. W-A-S-C-U-R-I-T-O. I'll put a link in the description. Kieran is interesting takes on Israel from Ireland. And I also see your bio also says that you are a Gweil Gore fan of the Irish language, or at least a partial one, as you'd say, as well as a vegan. And I'm sure you're many, many things beyond those two. Indeed, yes. Thanks so much, Kieran. I appreciate you taking the time to share your story and experience. And have a good evening over in Ireland.