Because it's gutting, because it's personal. . .

. . . and because the Irish political class is a disgrace.

A brief newsletter today.

I’ve removed the paywall and reposted the long hard look at Irish antisemitism I wrote for The Real Story last November: The Faith Of Our Fathers: About a massacre, about Ireland and Israel, about the IRA and the Nazis, and why my family ended up in Canada.

I’m doing this because my old chum Ben Cohen has an important piece in Algemeiner today: Antisemitism in Ireland ‘Blatant and Obvious’ in Wake of Hamas Onslaught, Says Jewish Former Cabinet Minister Alan Shatter.

I’d been on about this as well in the National Post: Antisemitic Ireland needs to shake off the imbecility

There’s something unmentioned in Ben’s piece - likely because Shatter doesn’t brag about it, but he damn well should. It’s the central role he played while he was Justice Minister in securing an apology, an amnesty and a pardon for those Irishmen in the Irish defence forces who endured statutory cruelties for defying Eamon De Valera’s neutrality when they set off to fight on the Allied side in the Second World War.

Those brave men - nearly 5,000 in all - were subjected to laws known at the time as the Starvation Orders, “seven years’ starvation, seven years’ destitution, and to find themselves branded, as far as the State can do so, as pariah dogs, as outcasts, untouchables. . .” Only about 100 were still alive when Shatter secured their pardon.

The predicament was even worse for the Irish republicans loyal to the anti-treaty side in the Civil War - and so remained outside the official Irish forces - who crossed the Irish Sea to fight the Nazis. My father was among them. Dad was a member of Fianna Eireann, an above-ground anti-treaty organization De Valera outlawed the year before the Second World War began.

A great-uncle, Jimmy Glavin, third from left. He was 19. He was among 12 IRA volunteers killed in the Clonmult Massacre, February 20, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. Seven were murdered after surrendering, Jimmy among them.

it’s a long, story, a fascinating story and a sad story. It well illuminates the hideous mindset that has become entrenched across the Irish political class, Irish academia, and the Irish news media. It’s a sociopathology Canadians are becoming all too familiar with, right here in good old “multicultural” and “tolerant” Canada.

A faint hope: It could be that the Judeophobic phenomenon Shatter describes in his conversation with Ben is mainly entrenched among jackeens, and not so much among my crowd, which you could call culchies without getting your ears boxed.

I raise this possibility in light of this past weekend’s rejection of the double referendum on amendments to the Irish constitution. Enthusiastically supported by the “respectable” Irish press and by every major Irish political party, the amendments were roundly opposed by almost everybody else.

Both amendments were voted down in all but one of Ireland’s 39 constituencies - a country-wide rejection of 73.93 percent of voters in the “care” amendment and a 67.69 percent rejection of the proposed redefinition of “family.” A good-enough explanation of all that can be found here.

Anyway, it’s open to everybody now, no paywall: The Faith Of Our Fathers. If you don’t subscribe alreadly, you really should.