 Hi friends and subscribers, welcome back to my YouTube channel, my name is Daniel Rosal. This channel focuses on life and the ground in Jerusalem and Israel. This week the Irish deputy prime minister is visiting Israel and the Middle East. Given that I'm an Irish expat living in Israel and have covered the topic of the Ireland-Israel relationship on quite a few occasions, I thought I'd give a rundown on how the visit has been reported both here and in Ireland. Miola Martin is the deputy prime minister of Ireland as well as the minister for foreign affairs. Ireland tends to try to roll a few different activities into its state visits to Israel which have occurred about once a year lately. Typically the visiting visitor will hold a meeting with the Israeli prime minister or the minister of foreign affairs, or as happened yesterday with both of them. Then zip over to Ramallah to meet with the Palestinian authority president Mahmoud Abbas, then maybe spend a bit of time in Lebanon where there are a bunch of Irish peacekeepers on Judy with the UN, and then head back to Dublin on a business jet. Ireland being a small nation uses a Learjet operated by the Air Corps for this purpose. Here's a photo of the plane and the flight tracking from an excellent aviation-related Twitter account which I follow. Judging by public announcements at least, Irish state visits to Israel typically involve both sides sitting down politely to tell one another that they disagree on the key issues in the conflict. What's not as commonly reported in the media is the trade delegations that tend to take place around these state visits and which tend to shore up business for the two countries. So it's kind of like a polite scripted conversation between two people who don't get along, followed by a separate group of people doing a bit of business. Here's some footage from the Israeli press office of what the meeting looked like either way. Ireland usually gives out to Israel these meetings about its building of settlements, and Israel sometimes gives out to Ireland about its virulently pro-Palestinian stance. And then everybody calls it a day. On this particular state visit, Israel seems to have chosen to up the fight little about anti-Semitism in particular. Ireland for its part has been sending out signals along the lines of we don't hate you, we just disagree with you politically. The Irish Foreign Minister visited Yad Vashem and posed for a suitably contrite looking photo and then offered some words about how terrible the Holocaust was. Earlier in the day, however, the founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland lashed out at Israeli media for calling Ireland generally anti-Semitic, saying that such claims amounted to stirring the mud. Israel also used the dialogue to express its concern about the possible extension of a Sinn Fein-led government in Ireland. Sinn Fein is sort of at the forefront of Irish opposition to Israel. So if Israel thought the current crop of politicians in Ireland were hostile, it probably knows that what is potentially in store is going to be a lot worse. Ireland argued that it was simply incorrect to state that as a country, it was anti-Israel. Mehole Martin claimed that Ireland's opposition to specific Israeli policies rather stems from, quote, its longstanding and principled position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Irish FM offered the Northern Irish peace process as a potential model for Israel, which has only happened about probably a thousand times before. He said that in 2008 it was unimaginable that peace could come to the island of Ireland, but it happened. So surely the same thing could happen in Israel if people just wished for it hard enough. Given that Ireland tends to agitate against Israel on the international stage and its fora, and that its population is overwhelmingly hostile to the Jewish state, I actually find it kind of hard to believe that Ireland actually made this claim, but it happened. The very same day as he met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the Irish FM travelled over to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas. In Ramallah, according to a statement of the meeting posted on the official Wafa News Agency, the Irish Foreign Minister lashed out at settler terrorism and said that Israeli settlement activity was contributing to unrest in the region. Personally, I have no time in respect for Ireland's attempt to meddle in the Middle East process. Ireland seems to genuinely believe that if it can butter up both sides and serve as the good-faced mediator, that it will solve the conflict. The only thing that surprises me at this point is that, as time goes on, Ireland seems to be getting progressively more delusional about its ability to actually fulfil this role in real life, while Israel for its part becomes progressively more skeptical and Israeli public opinion that Ireland is a hostile country seems to be growing. Israel has probably just left wondering why Ireland is trying so hard to convince it that it's actually neutral. Want to get more videos from me? Please consider liking this video and subscribing to this YouTube channel.