Victor Davis Hanson: Why Ireland Is So Hostile to Israel

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Victor Davis Hanson:  So I was one-quarter Irish and one-quarter Welsh and one-half Swedish—and  

Jack Fowler: I think that’s 100% there.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. But I know I have Mongol blood in there somewhere.  

Jack Fowler: Sorry. Well, let’s do a 23andMe test someday. My great-grandfather was the Grand Marshal of the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade, so that kind of makes me Irish royalty. 

But I have no tolerance for Irish antisemitism, and we’ve got it by the boatload.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Brendan O’Neill, did you see him, his little video? Brendan O’Neill. You know, he writes for Spiked.  

Jack Fowler: Yeah. I have him in my newsletter this week.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, it was really good. He said he, he was good. 

And then, the other British, you know, our friend that was on the cruises.  

Jack Fowler: What? Douglas Murray?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. Douglas wrote or did a very good interview about Ireland, and it was full of passion. And he was really angry about it, given their moralistic lectures to everybody about—  

Jack Fowler: And their history …  

Victor Davis Hanson: And their history as an oppressed people. 

And I was really shocked by it. And they wouldn’t even shake the hands of the Israeli athletes after a soccer match. And it’s gonna hurt the—Wearing armbands. It’s gonna hurt the Israeli economy. It’s in a wartime footing to begin with, and then if all these countries boycott it in various ways.

If you say you’re boycotting products that were produced by settlement, many industries—it doesn’t really… They’re just gonna boycott anything Israeli. And what I don’t understand is they—There’s a lot of new videos coming out on October 7th.  

So there’s 1,200 people that went in there that were killed and slaughtered by 5,000 Hamas, but there was also 2,000 civilians that came onward. There were people to rape, people to kill, people to mutilate. 

They had planned it. The 20,000 workers were in on it. Many of them, they were giving surveillance to Hamas. They were hiding weapons in advance. And they committed atrocities. And then nobody… The Irish don’t, the Spanish don’t, the Germans don’t. They don’t. The American Left doesn’t. They never say, “What would you do?” 

All they say is, “Well, this was earned,” or “This was inevitable.” But there hadn’t been a Jewish person or an Israeli person in Gaza since 2006. But the UN had poured in $20-plus billion, most of it from Americans and Europeans. And remember the greenhouses, Jack, where that American philanthropist gave $50 million worth of very lucrative high-tech greenhouses to ship winter vegetables to a very—in a very profitable fashion? 

And what did they do as soon as they got it? They looted it, destroyed it. They’d rather have nothing than have Jewish fingerprints on it. And then they had an election, as they always in one election, one time. And they’re—And so for the next, what, 18 years, they had their country. It was autonomous. They were short, of course, fuel, power, water. 

I don’t know, 10, 20% of those necessities were provided by the hated Israelis, and they left them alone. In fact, they kind of favored them. And the wall is very impressive. I’ve seen it in Israel. It’s not a wall of iron at all, the Gaza wall. 20,000 day laborers getting three times the wage, so when somebody does that to you, then what do you do? 

They never tell us. I guess they mean kind of put your little hands up like a little puppy and say, “Please, please, UN, I confess to all my sins. Will you give me absolution because I deserved this massacre?” Would that have worked?  

And then remember, everybody, that the architect of this mini-genocide was Mr. Yahya Sinwar. He’s the one you saw hiding from that drone that took him out. But what you don’t see is nearly 20 years ago, he was a terrorist murderer who was in an Israeli prison for murder, and he got dizzy, Jack. He had a headache, and he had a cancer—a non-cancerous but would’ve been fatal meningioma brain tumor. 

And so according to Nicholas Kristof, who says the Israelis use dogs and then they defy the laws of biology and zoology and make them perform stunts never been seen before to rape, excuse me, rape Palestinian prisoners. They did something even worse, Jack. They took Mr. Sinwar in and they stripped him of his clothes and they put a humiliating gown on him. 

Then they put him in a sterile white room, almost like a prison, and then they operated, and they cut open his head. Can you imagine that? And they removed—Yes, they did remove the brain tumor, and yes, it did save his life, but it was so traumatic to have Jews do that to you. And he therefore was angry at them, so he organized October 7th. 

Isn’t that a terrible thing to do, is to take a Hamas torturer and operate and take his brain tumor and save his life?  

Jack Fowler: Yes. It’s a high point of gratitude, from what we’ve seen. You know, there’s something about the Irish, if I may speak broadly. A few maybe disconnected points, Victor. 

I mean, we know the Irish immigrants, here in the Civil War, they were some of the bravest soldiers.

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, they were. 

Jack Fowler: And after the Civil War, you know, when [Gen. George] Custer was wiped out, most of the names killed with him were, were Irish. 

Victor Davis Hanson: The 7th Cavalry was mostly an Irish cavalry.  

Jack Fowler: Yeah,  the “Gary Owen,” which used to be the theme song of our show. But there’s a great sense of victimhood. We talk about victimhood all the time, and the Irish have it … The Irish. A lot of Irish live and dwell and thrill to victimhood status. They have right to be PO’d at England, what England did to Ireland in the 1700s and 1800s. 

But it’s very deeply instilled in many Irish and Irish Americans.  

And also, Victor, two other things. The Irish left is, is really left. One of their patron saints is Che Guevara, for example. Also, the IRA trained with the Palestinians. So there’s this, there’s a significant connection between the— 

Victor Davis Hanson: That was in the Tom Clancy novel, remember? 

Jack Fowler: Yeah, yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah.  

Jack Fowler: Well…  

Victor Davis Hanson: And remember that the Irish prime minister in World War—Eamon de  

Jack Fowler: Valera?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. In World War II, not only knew of submarines from the Germans that were off the Irish coast, but he had been warned by Winston Churchill, “If you allow them to land, even though you’re a neutral country, we’re going to consider you a belligerent.” 

Jack Fowler: Uh-huh.  

Victor Davis Hanson: “And you better have an air force to stop what we’re going to do to you.” So they had to threaten them. And of course, when Hitler died, he sent condolences to the Nazi Party.  

Jack Fowler: I think he went in person.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I think he did.  

Jack Fowler: He went to the German embassy to sign the condolence book. 

Victor Davis Hanson: He did. He did. 

He did. So they were pro-Nazi, and we have the Spanish prime minister who was very—probably the most anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish leader in Europe. And we know the history of [Francisco] Franco, who would have joined the Nazis except the price that he demanded from Hitler, a joint invasion by land and sea of Gibraltar to get it, and most of French Vichy Morocco. 

Hitler said it was an eight-hour argument, and I’d rather have my tooth pulled than deal with Franco again. And then we have, of course, the present-day Italians that are very anti-Israel, and we know what [Benito] Mussolini—I think [Benjamin] Netanyahu mentioned that in his speech. So it’s very strange for these people to lecture on morality. 

Jack Fowler: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: I did a debate, Jack. It was one of—I’ve had three occasions on Piers Morgan recently. One was with a fanatic professor from the Middle East who was, I thought, just spouted lies. The second one was from a Chinese communist who was parading around as a disinterested professor in Australia who told us that Mao Zedong did not commit any mass murderers. 

I got so angry. It was right after—not too far off my operation, but the first one, my heart rate went up. I have my Apple Watch, 135. The second one was only 125, and then yesterday I did, or maybe it was Monday, I debated a democratic socialist professor who gave me the standard Marxist exegesis that United States was hopeless, its economy was destroyed, socialists were taking over, Europe was going to be socialist. 

And then every time I tried to politely keep calm and said, “Could I just say something? Lowest poverty rate in history last month. Highest per capita family income at $87,000 in history. Your socialist communist China is $10 trillion smaller than our economy despite four times the population. Your socialist EU with 100 million more people is also $10 trillion smaller than our economy. 

And third quarter Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta revised 5% growth they think, economic growth. Record numbers of orders for computers, heavy durable goods, et cetera. Record foreign investment. Unemployment 4.1. 140,000—  

Jack Fowler: Just something the other day, Victor, about this, maybe you mentioned the steel factory, yes, in Iowa. Monster investment, $15 billion. 

Victor Davis Hanson: So I was trying to tell him, and what was the socialist… Everybody should, I think, pay attention to this because it shows you what will happen if they take control. The first thing he said is, they do three things, and this fits Saeed too. First, it’s ad hominem. 

“What do you do? You’re ignorant. You don’t have any credentials.” Okay. I’m a… Second thing, they’re arrogant.  “I’m a PhD, and I have a university position. I’m an economist.” Second thing.  

Third, they’re vulgar. “You have your head up Trump’s blank blank.” And Piers was just watching us, and I said to him, I said, “Is this serious? Is this a joke? What is going on here?” I couldn’t say a word without him interrupting, and I’m not gonna go on that show. I try to just— 

Jack Fowler:  Were you asking Piers that live while this—?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, while he was yelling and screaming while I was— He screamed for five minutes, and then it was my turn, and halfway through, he interrupted, and he said, “You’re just making up all this data.” 

And I said, “You can find it. It’s out there. It’s in the public domain. You don’t believe we had 140,000 jobs? You don’t think the poverty…”

“You’re lying. It’s all doctored. They… Your GDP is all wrong.”  

Wow. And then he started, you know, “You have no credentials. You’re not educated. I’m a professor.” 

“Get, get… You have your head up blank blank,” very vulgar. Yeah. And Piers, that’s what he does. He invites people on. It’s kind of like a politicized version of Jerry Springer, you know what I mean?  

Jack Fowler: Yeah, yeah. 

Victor Davis Hanson: And he never tells you, he never tells your… Megan’s a wonderful person that books for me, and he never tells her what I’m going to do. 

He said he was going to… This was the first time after the book was published, so I thought we were gonna discuss the book. But it had nothing to do with the book. He just mentioned it one time, and then it was lucha libre, and he got…  

So when you go on there, I’m not an extremist, but he thinks that if you get a Chinese communist apologist or an American professor living in the UAE who hates Israel, or you get a commie socialist person who will scream and yell, then I’m supposed to what? 

Refute? You can’t talk to them because they’re complete ideologues. No. So it’s not… You think you go on there for the benefit of our listeners and us who are on the conservative side to try to get out in the public domain that these people are completely bogus, erroneous. But because it’s bloodsport for these TV shows— 

I don’t want them to be on any one side. I would just like them to say, “Please do not interrupt the other speaker. Please no ad hominem attacks. Please get your facts straight about your own credentials versus the other person’s.” 

Jack Fowler: If the guy’s being a jerk, turn off his microphone. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. 

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