April 7, 2014 · 2:07 pm

President Higgins goes to London

This is an historic week in Anglo-Irish relations as the President of Ireland begins his first official state visit to Britain today.

The rapprochement between the Heads of State of Ireland and Britain had evolved over the years with the visits of Presidents Robinson and McAleese during the 1990s, which included meetings with Queen Elizabeth II.  Building on this goodwill and the developments associated with the Northern Ireland peace process, Queen Elizabeth II’s official visit to Ireland in March 2011 saw historic and deeply felt gestures of reconciliation, including a visit to Ireland’s Garden of Remembrance for those who died in the cause of Irish freedom.

In making his official journey, President Higgins reciprocates and in so doing establishes a new era in relations between Ireland and Britain.

That this visit seems so fitting is a reflection of the cooperation and friendship that has developed at other levels between the Irish and the British, from culture and business to government-to-government and within the European Union.  So it would be easy to miss its significance.  Set in its historic narrative, what is happening this week overturns an historic relationship between the imperial and the colonised that arguably spanned eight hundred years and confirms a relationship now of equality and concord.

That we are about to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Rising and the road to independence in 1922 stands testament to the unfinished business that bedevilled Anglo-Irish relations throughout the twentieth century, obstructing post-independence reconciliation between the Ireland and Britain.

That unfinished business was partition.  The partition of Ireland was in 1921 a blunt solution to a complex problem of divided loyalties, contending identities, localised popular affiliations and territorial control.  When Northern Ireland exploded in civil strife in 1969, Anglo-Irish relations were set on a contentious course for over a decade and more.

Only in the 1980s did the two governments come together to find a way forward, creating one of the finest Irish diplomatic achievements with the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the intergovernmental platform that ultimately helped deliver the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Finding peace meant exploring different strands of what it meant to be Irish.  The struggle for independence had narrowed the definition of what being Irish meant but in recent decades there has been a recovery of the full complexity and variety of what being Irish could mean.

By the late 1980s Ireland came to recognise, for example, Irish service in the armed services of other states.  During his visit, President Higgins will attend a viewing of the Colours of disbanded Irish regiments in the British Army.

This process has helped to close the gap between the different traditions in Ireland, most dramatically represented by the iconography of 1916; for Irish nationalists the iconography of 1916 has been the Easter Rising just as for Unionists it has been the loyal sons of Ulster “marching toward the Somme”.  We can now approach the centenaries of these events with a more magnanimous backward glance, recognising the legitimacy of the motivations of all those men who fought in their various ways for their country.

As carefully crafted as that of the British monarch’s visit to Ireland, the President’s programme in Britain has many elements designed to capture our relationship not just as history but as a reflection of today’s realities: you can read about the full programme here

http://www.president.ie/uncategorized/state-visit-to-the-united-kingdom

I’ll post updates @EamonnMcKee and there will be a lot of coverage including at www.rte.ie so be sure to have a look at the events unfold in this most historic and important week in Anglo-Irish relations.

 Eamonn

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador, Tel Aviv

 

 

 

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March 11, 2014 · 2:09 pm

Irish America, Tammany Hall (and the beginning of the Irish Jewish New York Relationship)

I was very lucky to have been posted twice to the United States, to the Embassy Washington in the early 1990s and to the Consulate General New York at the close of the decade.  There I developed a love for Irish America, its history and its community today.   The story of the Irish in America is a truly epic one, really biblical in its scope, complexity and significance.

As a young diplomatic officer, I was privileged to be part of the Embassy’s involvement in the high point of the St Patrick’s Day celebration of Irish America, namely the Taoiseach’s presentation of shamrock to the President in the White House, followed by the President’s attendance at the Speaker of the House’s St. Patrick’s Day luncheon.  (The only other time of the year that the President goes to Congress is for the State of the Union Address.)  But it is the St Patrick’s Day parades, large and small, across all fifty States that reveal the true reach of the Irish in America.

If the Great Famine of 1845-1851 shaped Ireland today, those who fled it to the US profoundly altered the course of America politically, socially and culturally.  Tremendous work has been done to tell that story but I am not convinced it has been fully told yet.

That is partly to do with the sheer scale of the impact of the Irish in America.  It begins in earnest with the Protestant ‘Scots-Irish”, the unsettled settlers from Ireland, (and prior to that Scotland), who began to arrive in the American colonies the mid-1700s, restlessly moved westward, helped form the ideology of the American revolution and stirred the early agitation against British suzerainty.  The bifurcation between them and the masses of starving Catholic native Irish fleeing the Great Famine a century later disrupts the historical narrative of the Irish in America.

The full story also suffers, I suspect, partially from the fact that the Irish arriving en masse in the 19th century were a “disruptive” energy that challenged the Anglo-American establishment, an establishment that still retains much influence through its formative shaping of the American historical narrative of itself.

The situation has not been helped by the characterization of the Irish in America; consider how quickly certain cultural tropes spring to mind when mention is made of ‘Irish America’; the fighting Irish, the roguish gangster, the tough cop, the ambitious white-laced mother, the morose blue collar father, the alcoholic writer and the stern priest presiding if not ruling over his unruly flock. It is probably the fate of all newly arrived immigrant groups to quickly garner stereotypes that are hard to shake off and which occlude a proper assessment of their contribution and role in society.

Tammany Hall looms large in the formation of the notions about the Irish as purveyors of a unique style of political manipulation and graft.  It is great, therefore, to see its history subject to historical revision in Terry Golway’s Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Making of Modern American Politics.  Let the debate begin.

In the interests in full disclosure, I am happy to say that in my time in New York I came to know Terry and to enjoy his company, which is witty, erudite and passionate about Irish America.  His has written extensively on Irish America: Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom (St Martin’s Griffin, 1999); a history of the New York Fire Department in which the Irish contribution looms so large, So Other Might Live, A History of New York’s Bravest, the FDNY from 1700 to the Present (Basic Books, 2003); and For the Cause of Liberty, a Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes, (Simon and Schuster 2012).

In his latest work, Terry tells me that “the book really is the first attempt to look at Tammany as a profoundly Irish institution, with roots in the Emancipation movement and the elections of 1826 and 1828. I was in Dublin several years ago researching those elections in the papers of Thomas Wyse and Daniel O’Connell. But I also show how the trans-Atlantic Anglo-American community used Tammany as an argument against Irish home rule, and used Irish politics as an argument against Tammany. The overall point: The Irish could not rule themselves.”

His analysis of Tammany Hall is really an exploration of the Irish approach to politics which was grounded in the imperatives of the society that they had come from; colonial and oppressed, the native Irish operated beneath the radar of British rule and put a high emphasis on personal reciprocity as means of support and survival.  Concealment and gaming the rules of the British system were necessities for survival and therefore considered virtues.

If this was true of life in Ireland it was all the more so true for emigrants arriving in the alien environment of urban America; here they needed support to get started, particularly when faced with the hostility of Anglo-Protestant establishment and the ‘Know-Nothings’.

The idea of politics as a reciprocal arrangement between the voters and those whom they elect was the founding notion of Tammany Hall and the ‘machine’ politics that would do so much to influence and ultimately forge the Democratic Party.  It injected into public discourse the idea that Government was meant to be about the care of the citizen and not simply the regulation of the markets and the preservation of stability in the name of the elites.

I asked Terry about the Irish Jewish relationship in New York and he wrote “I have quite a lot on Tammany’s relationship with the city’s Jewish community, another forgotten part of the story. It really begins with the imminent election of the city’s first Irish-Catholic mayor, W.R. Grace, in 1880. When he was attacked because of his religion….Jews on the Lower East Side held a rally for Grace, during which a lawyer named Albert Cardozo, father of a future US Supreme Court justice, said that if Catholics were attacked like this, Jews would be next, so they should stand together. In the early 20th Century, Tammany’s Irish leaders developed close relations with the city’s Jewish population.”

I sincerely hope that someday Terry puts pen to paper on the Irish Jewish relationship in New York!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Eamonn

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March 5, 2014 · 4:23 pm

Samuel Beckett and Avigdor Arikha: The Long Friendship of an Irish writer and a Jewish Painter

“A Different Side of Sam; Beckett, Arikha and a Parisian Adolescence.”

Annual Samuel Beckett Lecture by Alba Arikha

Tel Aviv University

29 May 2014

This is the eleventh successive year of the annual Samuel Beckett lecture at Tel Aviv University.  It is the brainchild and longstanding project of Prof. Linda Ben-Zvi.  I want to thank her and the University’s Theatre Department for creating this wonderful literary bridge between Ireland and Israel.

This year the lecture will be delivered by Alba Arikha, the daughter of one of Israel’s greatest artists and the godchild of the great man himself, Samuel Beckett.  Her life, and her story of her father’s forty years of friendship with Beckett in Paris, weave together many strands; from the Irish writer’s Jewish connections and sympathies, Avigdor Arikha’s own Holocaust and wartime experiences, to their lives in Paris over the decades and the grounds for their deep friendship.

The causal chemistry of friendship is a mystery, as ineluctable as it is abiding.  But the outsider can usually trace some of the elements that forge it.

Both Beckett and Arikha found themselves deeply immersed in the great cataclysm of the rise of Nazism and World War II. Beckett fleetingly witnessed Nazi triumph within Germany during his stay there between 1936 and 1937 before moving to France and fighting alongside the Resistance, the Maquis, during the war.  Arikha survived the death camps and serious injury in Israel’s War of Independence before moving permanently to Paris.  Both men were confronted with the abject abandonment of all morality and goodness that was both a cause and a consequence of the great global conflict and its greatest sin, the Shoah.

As men of the arts, they arrived at the same conclusion about their craft and its purpose; to look unflinchingly at life and report back without artifice.

For the writer Beckett this meant spare, even brutal prose to describe the existential absurdity of life without a god, without meaning.  For Arikha, it meant abandoning abstract art in favour of drawing from life directly and in one go.  He would use neither photographs nor memory but draw his subject – whether himself, models or the quotidian things of life like fruit, furniture, rooms, even stones – there and then in one sitting.

Indeed, Arkiha’s art has a startling immediacy, most notably in his self-portraits which are alert, even electrifying.  His many sketches of Beckett show the mastery of his craft.  Like all great art, they capture Beckett both physically – angular, slouching comfortably, smoking, peering – and psychologically: meditative, ever thoughtful, as if always on the verge of being about to say something.  You long to hover in that apartment in Paris as Arikha sketches his friend and to wait to hear their conversation.

While we can’t go back, we have an emissary from that time and that very place in Alba Arikha.  She, along with her sister Noga, grew up with her father and her mother, the poet Anne Atik, in a household that served as an intellectual and artistic hub, whose energies and emotions were coloured by the seismic events through which both her father and his close friend Beckett had lived.   It was also an arena for the struggle between a traumatised father and a young adolescent striving to create her own future and her own life, to escape what Beckett’s mentor, James Joyce, called the nightmare of history.

Her memoir, Major/Minor (Quartet, 2011), recounts her coming of age in the 1980s and her evolving view of the Irishman.  Her inclination was to dismiss him as part of that burden of history that loomed over her home until she discovered Beckett through his writings.  As she recalled of his style, “No surplus, all essentials; something to strive for, when I’m older and wiser.” She remembers him: “He had a very gentle way of talking, Beckett, very calm. He spoke slowly and there was definitely something very soothing about him, very shy about him. He never judged, really.” And he would encourage her as a writer.

In association with the Theatre Studies Department of Tel Aviv University, the Embassy is delighted to host Alba Arikha as the speaker for this year’s Samuel Beckett Lecture: “A Different Side of Sam; Beckett, Arikha and a Parisian Adolescence”.

It promises to be a wonderful evening, followed by refreshments and conversation.  Please come to join us on Thursday, May 29th at 6:00pm, Room 101 Kikone Building, Tel Aviv University.

Best wishes,

Eamonn

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December 10, 2013 · 6:13 pm

Ireland’s Response to the Syrian Humanitarian Crisis

In the face of a humanitarian disaster, its sheer scale can inhibit compassion: human psychology is such that we can more readily appreciate the loss of a single life than that of many.  Stalin was on to something when he reputedly said that the loss of one life is a tragedy, the loss of a million is a statistic.  He would know.  Keeping humanitarian disasters front and centre of international and personal attention is vital to maintaining an effective response.

The humanitarian disaster in Syria is all the greater a tragedy because it is man-made, because unlike a natural disaster it is apparently relentless and unrelenting.  We all fervently hope that the talks in Geneva in January can bring a halt to hostilities.  If so, at least humanitarian access can begin in earnest.  Even then, the consequences of the conflict will be with us for many years.  Along with its EU partners, the UN and a range of NGOs and Red Cross organisations, Ireland continues to assist in addressing this humanitarian disaster.

Bearing in mind that each statistic is one life ended, displaced, threatened, bereaved or impoverished, let’s look at the big picture.

Out of a population of 22 million, the death toll is approaching 120,000 people. More than 30% are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and an estimated 4.25 million people are displaced inside Syria, including 235,000 Palestinian refugees.   Over 2.5 million people inside Syria have not been reached with any assistance for up to a year. Almost 2.3 million refugees are sheltering in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa.

The revised UN response plan calls for $5.2 billion dollars for operations in 2013, the largest humanitarian appeal in the UN’s history.  About 60% is funded.

Ireland announced last October that it was providing an additional €3 million, bringing our total contribution to €14.011 million, of which €11.361 million in 2013. Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr. Joe Costello T.D., made this announcement during his visit to Lebanon.  Such visits – like his earlier visit to camps in Jordan and that of Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade, Eamonn Gilmore T.D. to Nizip refugee camp in Southern Turkey last April – are important for understanding the nature of the problem, for bringing attention to them and for providing Government Ministers and officials with the information and insights to further discussions with partners in the EU and UN.

With this additional contribution, Ireland’s pledge of €4.7 million made at the High Level Donor Pledging Conference for Syria in Kuwait City last January has been exceeded by almost €6.5m to date.

In terms of the delivery of this assistance, Irish Aid has a tremendous depth of experience, whether it is in the rapid delivery of material aid from our prepositioned stocks or funding a range of partners with whom we have close working relations.  It’s not just signing cheques: it is about Irish Aid’s years of experience ensuring appropriate, needs-based assistance and effective delivery.

However, expertise aside, it is money that makes humanitarian responses happen.  Some €1.15 million has been channelled through Irish NGOs Goal and Concern, in support of their operations.  €500,000 was allocated to Oxfam in support of their programmes in Jordan and Lebanon. These programmes focus on emergency food and non-food items, sanitation, suppression of water born diseases and curative health care.

Our aid included €750,000 worth of supplies of non-food items (shelter, blankets, water kits) from our emergency relief stocks held in Dubai, through our Rapid Response Initiative: 45 tonnes of Irish Aid emergency supplies were delivered to UNRWA to the value of €211,000.

Ireland has been a strong supporter of the UN’s Syrian humanitarian response too: €3.45m to the UNHCR; €1.7m to the World Food Programme: €300,000 to the World Health Organisation: €1.2m to UNWRA; €1m to UNICEF and €1.75m to OCHA’s Emergency Response Fund. €100,000 was donated to the International Rescue Committee.

Irish Aid funding of course comes from the Irish taxpayer and it is a great point of pride for all of us representing Ireland abroad that Irish public support for humanitarian relief remains consistently strong, even as we meet our own economic and financial challenges.

The numbing scale of statistics can hide the human tragedy in any disaster, natural or man-made.  In the Middle East, there is an additional barrier.  In this region, considerations of the turmoil and conflict often focus on the complicated and shifting matrix of geopolitical interests.  As the cross-roads of human activity and movement in and between Europe, Asia and Africa, thus it has always been.  It is a testament to the relief organisations, to their personnel on the ground, often risking life and limb, and to their donors, whether large or small, that they see past these considerations and look to relieve the human suffering that comes from the clash of interests and ideology.

Humanitarian responses can only do so much to relieve the suffering which is the symptom of underlying conflict.  It’s up the peace makers to look past the symptoms and get to the root of the problem.  There are enough natural disasters to deal with without man adding to them.  We can only hope that the leaders in the Syrian conflict say enough is enough and that some form of a deal is hammered out in Geneva.

Best wishes,

Eamonn

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November 21, 2013 · 1:32 pm

Ambassador’s Message – Some Themes of Topics from my Twitter Account, November

I thought you might be interested in some of the topics and themes that I’ve been covering via Twitter over the last couple of weeks.

The Tánaiste and Deputy Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore, TD, announced a major review of Ireland’s foreign policy and the means of their delivery.   He said “the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will shortly launch a consultation process as part of this review, inviting input from members of the public, and other stakeholders with an interest in Ireland’s foreign policy.”   The Irish Times report is here  http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/gilmore-announces-complete-review-of-state-s-foreign-policy .

The Tánaiste made the announcement in the course of a speech whose main focus was on the centrality of Human Rights to Irish foreign policy principles and diplomatic activities.  The text of the speech is here http://www.dfa.ie/home/index.aspx?id=89926.

This Review comes at an important transitional time with Ireland proudly and stoically exiting the EU/IMF programme.  This is a not just a major achievement by Ireland but an invaluable investment in our reputation.  In the international bond market, a good reputation translates directly into lower and stable bond yields that will aid our delivery and lighten the burden on our future.  The Government announcement is here http://www.merrionstreet.ie/index.php/2013/11/ireland-to-exit-the-euimf-programme-on-15th-december-as-planned-and-without-further-supports/?cat=3

Another theme I’ve been picking up is hi-tech start-ups, with some links to articles and quotes.  This article from the Guardian used the example of Snapchat – very popular with my wife and daughters, its speed and disposability lends itself to pictures of the funny things of daily family life – as an insight into the current start-up culture: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/13/snapchat-app-sexting-lawsuits-valuation .  The BBC carried an interesting article on the almost artisanal approach to start-ups and creativity in Norway at a place called Mesh, “Oslo’s first bespoke hub for budding entrepreneurs”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24912717 .

A lot has been happening on the Northern Ireland front and Anglo-Irish relations generally.  The President of Ireland, Michael D. O’Higgins, will be the first Irish President on a State Visit to Britain next April.  This is accurately described as an historic event, a hinge moment in the long narrative of Anglo-Irish relations; see Irish Times editorial on its significance here http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/editorial/mr-higgins-goes-to-windsor-1.1599118 . 

The platform for this amicable visit, so reflective of the good relations now enjoyed between Ireland and Britain, was laid by Irish independence in 1922, the progress of the Northern Ireland Peace Process from the 1990s onwards, the pioneering visit of President Robinson to Buckingham Palace in 1993, the tremendous bridge-building work of President McAleese and the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland in 2011. 

For history buffs, it comes on the millennial anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf (Good Friday, 1014) when the great and only truly High King of Ireland, Brian Bóru, broke the power of the Vikings in Ireland (and some historians think fended off a major Danish invasion). 

More directly, it coincides with the centennial commemoration of the start of World War I.  We Irish nationalists have had a conflicted response to those Irishmen who enlisted in the British Army and fought in the Great War, instructed though they were to do so on Ireland’s behalf by the great Irish nationalist leader John Redmond (i.e. that fighting for ‘little Belgium’ would translate to an obligation to grant Irish home rule).  Since the late 1980s, however, Irish thinking has moved on very considerably and we are now recovering the deeply rooted tradition of Irish service in the British Army, lost sight of in the winnowing of Irish nationalist resurgence in the 20th century.  See an interesting article on this here http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/11/when-50000-irishmen-gathered-to-commemorate-the-first-world-war .  Both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste attended remembrance day services; see here http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1110/485740-gilmore-belfast .

The peace process in Northern Ireland is very much a work in progress.  This is true of the divisions still entrenched between the communities manifest in the Peace Walls, included in this Guardian article graphically illustrating the walls of the world (including the barrier here): http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2013/nov/walls?CMP=twt_gu

Dealing with Northern Ireland’s past and the legacy of the conflict is an ongoing issue as most recently shown by a new investigative report here  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24987465   on British Army killings and by the Northern Ireland Attorney General’s suggestion that no prosecutions be pursued for acts carried out prior to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/anger-at-call-to-draw-line-under-past-northern-killings-1.1601889

I keep an eye out for insightful coverage of the Holocaust and this New York Times article captures a sometimes forgotten aspect of the rapacity and significance of stealing and disposing of the quotidian goods belonging to Jews destined for the death camps: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-robbing-the-jews.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 .

Twitter lends itself to sharing photos which I gleam from a variety of sources including National Geographic and Irish Archaeology, all involving Ireland of course: some examples here https://twitter.com/NatGeopix/status/401194177629028352/photo/1/large  and here http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGallDetail.asp?photoID=10380075&catID=198&contestCatID=&rowNumber=1&camID  . 

In local news, I attended the funeral of the Irish priest and renowned academic, Fr. Jerome Murphy O’Connor in Jerusalem.  A Dominican father, he devoted his life to the study of St Paul and the Holy Land, writing the brilliant and now standard guide The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide.  He was appointed Professor of New Testament at the École Biblique in Jerusalem in 1967 and held the position for the rest of his life.  His walking tours were legendary as was his expansive personality and deep intellect.  His brother Fr Kerry delivered a heartfelt tribute to his life, his personality and achievements at the funeral service at the beautiful Basilica de St. Etienne.  He noted that three of his grandparents’ children and six of their grandchildren joined religious orders, including his cousin, Archbishop of Canterbury Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor. 

Though he lived for some fifty years in Jerusalem, Fr Jerry, as he was fondly called by all who knew him, remained a true and great Irishman.  After an evocative service and blessing by his brother, accompanied by transcendent chanting by his Dominican brethren, Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor  was interred in the vault there, in the company of fellow scholars.  As I paused on the steps on the way in, I captured the scene here https://twitter.com/EamonnMcKee/status/400653809753395201/photo/1

As always we welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have about links to things of interest to Ireland and Israel. 

Best wishes,

 

Eamonn

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador of Ireland

Tel Aviv

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October 28, 2013 · 4:44 pm

Startup Ireland Israel I

A small group of Irish innovative startup entrepreneurs came to Israel recently.  They had been shepherded there by Clyde Hutchinson, instigator of the Irish Israeli Business Network (www.iibn.org  and www.linkedin.com/groups/Ireland-Israel-Business-Network ).  Clyde believes that there is a mutually beneficial and inspiring relationship between Ireland and Israel to be found in business.  He is a pioneer on this in many ways, prophesying a creative innovative Ireland linking up with the predominant global startup nation that is Israel today. I’m a believer in lessons learned and lessons shared so I think he is on to something.

Consider this; there are more companies from Israel quoted on the Nasdaq than Europe combined.  Ireland and Britain have five companies quoted there.  Japan has six.  Canada does pretty well with forty-five.  Israel has sixty-three on the Nasdaq Exchange, more than any country in the world other than the US itself. That’s right, sixty-three.  Recall too that this year alone there has been $5 billion, not million but billion, in acquisitions of Israeli startups. 

Clyde’s pioneering group arrived – I suspect with an air of anxiety about the security situation and uncertainty about what lay ahead –  to attend the Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Tel Aviv, hosted mainly by Yossi Vardi, widely regarded as the godfather of Israeli startups.  The DLD Conference is Israel’s largest international hi-tech gathering, attended by hundreds of startups, venture capitalists, angel investors and leading multinationals.  The DLD Conference is comparable in purpose though not scale to the Dublin Web Summit (over 4,000 attended last year; its Facebook today has 56,000 likes) which is happening on 30th and 31st October next.  Our Web Summit is fully booked out so if you want to go next year check it out here and register www.websummit.net .  I am delighted to say that some thirty Israeli companies will attend, along with Yossi Vardi.

The Irish trip to Tel Aviv was supported by Enterprise Ireland and by the Trade Promotion Division of my Department. Enterprise Ireland’s David Scanlon, who was supportive of this initiative from the start, came with them.  At the Embassy my deputy Julian Clare and I responded positively to a suggestion by David and Clyde that the visiting delegation needed a networking event. 

Yossi Vardi himself hosted an opening reception for DLD delegates at the Shimon Peres Centre for Peace, a fabulous new building in old Jaffa in the heart of Tel Aviv, its large open courtyard facing onto the crashing sea and the wide expanse of the Mediterranean, impressive even in the dark evening.  Clyde found me and introduced me to our Irish visitors.  I was curious about who they were, what they did:  I mean what were the startups developing, how were they funding their businesses, how indeed do you turn a startup into a business? What were their impressions of Israel? 

Articulate, energized and visionary, their answers were focused and precise.  It was fascinating to hear their assessment of the Irish ecosystem for startups, its creative ferment, its learning curve compared to Israel, its need to find models for success, to find Angel investors and venture capitalists.  They were impressed by Israel, intrigued by its mix of energy, innovation, hard-nosed business, by the breath of its ambitions, by the sight of development side-by-side with under-development, the intoxicating mix of antiquity and modernity,

The following evening we hosted the networking event at the Residence.  Some seventy guests – an admixture of Israeli startups, business experts and venture capitalists – mingled and got to know our Irish visitors.  In my remarks to our guests I said that every conversation sparkled with energy and ideas about the world today and the future as its is shaped by the digital revolution.  For in the world of startups, creativity, challenge and dissent are the platforms for success.  And if dissent is the key to success in the world of startups, then that was something we and Israelis have in common.

Who were our Irish entrepreneurs making their pitches?  Conor Murphy and his company Datahug, nominated for the Ernst and Young Awards this year in the innovation category.  Datahug analyses communication data to provide companies with a dynamic map of connections to access future business and markets.  We had Pat Phelan, CEO at Trustev, specializing in next-generation identity verification and fraud prevention.  Christian Ryder is a founder of FoneSense which will pay you every time your phone rings.  Grainne Barron, founder and CEO of Viddyad which allows you to make professional commercials online quickly and cost-effectively.  Fionnuala Healy, CTO and Co-founder of Gotcha Ninjas, a cloud based educational and motivational learning platform for students and parents.

From talking to our Irish innovators, the thrill of the startup, it seemed to me, is that its task is not to make a successful business by anticipating the future – like buying shares or investing in a futures market – but by making and shaping the future and how we live in it.  And doing that means challenging orthodoxy and authority.  Another ingredient, as Conor Murphy pointed out to me, is the capacity to learn and to reinvest from earlier investments and acquisitions: building experience and eventual success on the foundations of failure, experience and lessons learned. 

Challenging authority and taking failure as a key part of the road to success is pretty much the central message of Start-Up Nation, the account by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, of Israel’s phenomenal entrepreneurial success story.  For anyone interested in Ireland’s economic development I’d highly recommend it (stats on Israel’s success above were sourced there).

And while its available on RTE’s LivePlayer, have a look at the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards show for some inspiring stories about Ireland’s innovating business people here http://www.rte.ie/player/il/show. 

Many thanks then to Clyde for his commitment to the Irish-Israeli connection.  Check out his website and if you’re on Linkedin you’ll find his group and news of its activities and discussions there.   Thanks too to our Irish entrepreneurs for taking a punt on the trip to Israel.  More blogs on the hi-tech sector in Ireland and Israel will follow.

Eamonn

 

 

 

 

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October 20, 2013 · 7:00 pm

Simon Schama and the Lithuanian Connection

I have long been an admirer of Simon Schama as an historian and a contributor to the Financial Times.  He is one of a number of historians who in this global age have reached a vast audience through craft and eloquence, through the ability to tell stories through today’s media.  There is a humanistic majesty to his narratives, an appreciation that humankind is capable of great things as well as great barbarities.  

The grandson of Litvaks, he was in some ways the inevitable writer and host of the BBC’s documentary series The Story of the Jews.  As the series progressed, his own emotional investment in the narrative seemed to deepen, perhaps unpeel.  There is no contesting the fact that the story and the resonance he has personally with the story of the Jews has given the series a sharp charge, a personal and wholly engaging emotional depth:  See his visit to the Synagogue in Venice for his awe at the ability of Jews and their culture to survive expulsion (from Spain in this instance), persecution and ghettoization.  You can feel the depth of his feeling as he admires not just the beauty of its architecture but its mere presence, its affirmation of the Jews’ ability to continue to survive and indeed prosper.  As a man of letters himself, he is clearly mesmerized that so much of Judaism is focused on the word for its identity and for its survival as a stateless people over the centuries.  

Given the Litvak connection to Ireland, there is a particular interest for us in episode four of this series for in it Schama looks to the story of the Jews of the Russian Pale, formerly the Lithuanian-Polish kingdom.  It is from the shtetls of the Pale that the Irish Jews came, from these also that so many went to the United States.  Clustered in the Lower East Side, the Jews reformed their communities and many of them prospered, bringing US retail, banking and the Broadway musical to life.  He looks in some detail at the career of Yid Harburg, author of the Depression Era “Brother Can You Spare and Dime” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.  For Schama, the The Wizard of Oz’s anthem could only have come from the Jewish/Yiddish tradition, its aspiration to find another place, possibly mystical, possibly America, certainly Zion, where life can and will be better.

However as the episode closes it is Schama’s return to Lithuania, the land of his forebears, and his account of the murder of those who stayed behind by the Nazis and their local collaborators, that provides a jolt of personal drama, a look into the soul of someone struggling to comprehend what had happened to his people there in all its brutality and inhumanity.  As if he can only bear to ponder their terrible fate briefly, he returns to New York, to the triumph of survival and continuation, to that place over the rainbow.  It is a stunning piece of television, of history as story telling.  

Eamonn

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October 19, 2013 · 2:24 pm

The Rise and Decline of the Jewish Community in Ireland

There were three phases to the Litvak story in Dublin.  There was firstly the arrival and establishment of the community in and around Clanbrassil Street and the South Circular Road, beginning from the 1870s and peaking with a community of some 5,000 on the eve of World War II.  The second phase was its migration upward socially and economically and in parallel physically to the red-bricked and salubrious areas of Rathmines, Rathgar, and Terenure. The third was its decline, part of a global convergence of Jews to centers like London, Manchester, Tel Aviv, and New York in the wake of the Holocaust.

The sense of vibrancy of the Jewish community in Dublin as it established itself is caught wonderfully in Asher Benson’s illustrated Jewish Dublin, Portraits of Life by the Liffey (Dublin, 2007).  In its vivid personalities and evocative photographs, Dublin’s leading Jews and their stories come to life:

Artists like Estella Solomon and Harry Kernoff.  Dr. Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland whose son would make aliya and become a President of Israel.  Rugby player and Master of the Rotunda Dr Bethel Solomons.

Of the Briscoe family, Benson writes “father and son represented the Fianna Fáil party in the Dáil for a continuous period of 75 years, from 1927 to 2002; in addition they served between them three stints as Lord Mayor of Dublin, in 1956 and 1961 (Bob) and 1988 (Ben)”. 1981 was an interesting general election, with four Jewish candidates: Dr Hazel Boland, Bren Briscoe, Mervyn Taylor and Alan Shatter, now our Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence.  All but Dr Boland were elected or in the case of Briscoe re-elected.

Intellectual and academic Jack Weingreen, Professor of Hebrew at Trinity College Dublin 1939-79, who wrote a classic Hebrew grammar and whose devotion to antiquities was honoured with the establishment in 1977 of the Weingreen Museum of Biblical Antiquities at Trinity College.

The Ellimans whom Benson lauds as ‘kings of Irish entertainment’ for the fun and glamour Louis Elliman’s cinemas, theatres and associated restaurants brought to Dublin in the middle decades of the twentieth century.  Thanks to Louis, who arrived penniless in Dublin in 1894, Dublin social life enjoyed De Lux cinema in Camden Street, the Metropole Grill, the Queen’s, the Savoy and the Corinthian.  He bought the Gaeity in 1936 and outright ownership of the Theatre Royal.  He not only nurtured Irish talent like Noel Purcell and Maureen Potter but brought international glamour to the Dublin stage with the likes of Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Nat King Cole and Jimmy Cagney.

Gerald Davis, grandson of Litvak immigrants, “painter, gallery owner, art collector, jazz enthusiast and sometime businessman” as Benson describes him.

Benson records and illustrates many more businessmen, lawyers, academics, philanthropists, musicians and writers that enriched Dublin life.  And he tells too the story of the institutions whose formation traced the fortunes of Dublin’s Jewish community, from the trades unions of tailors (the “Jewish” Union), Synagogues and schools to the Edmonston Golf Club (formed because of the difficulty Jews had joining existing clubs) and the Maccabi Sports Club in Kimmage.

Ó Gráda sums up:

“The uninterrupted increase in Ireland’s Jewish community between the 1870s and the 1940s was a measure of its prosperity and integration.  In those decades the community showed every sign of being viable and long lasting.  The suburban descendants of the pre-1914 generation were no longer ‘sojourners’ of the middlemen minority model, always ready to pack their bags and move on.  To be sure, the second and third generation clung to their religious faith and their Zionist convictions.  They also remained largely self-employed and their occupational profile was distinctive….  Some became heavily involved in the city’s political and cultural life….  Some invested heavily in manufacturing; others acquired skills requiring considerable acculturation and not so readily transferable abroad.  Lawyers, auctioneers, dentists and doctors mixed freely with their Gentile counterparts.”

The third part of the story is of course the decline of the Jewish community with emigration after World War II to Britain (mainly) , the US and Israel.  Back to O’Gráda for his take on the likely factors behind this: the underperformance of the Irish economy and its “snail-paced” growth; the avoidance of assimilation through intermarriage; the claustrophobia of Ireland of the 1950s; a sense of exile and wandering that would take many Jews to the new state of Israel.

The decline in Ireland’s Jewish community, Ó Gráda notes, fitted the broader global pattern whereby low fertility and intermarriage eliminated small Jewish communities in favour of larger ones.  Thus the Jewish communities of Manchester and London have continued to prosper while small clusters throughout Britain have disappeared.

So for what was a brief historical period, Ireland’s capital city was enriched by its Jewish community. Joyce’s fictional Leopold Bloom has fixed this presence in our collective imagination: However, Bloom is not the archetype nor could he be for such a varied and successful community of individuals.

The vivacity of Dublin’s Jewish community’s social and religious life, its sparkling contribution to the city’s cultural and academic life, the dedication of its second and third generations to political life and to their chosen professions lives on in the Jewish community that remains (mainly) in Dublin and Belfast, in its dedicated architecture, in a number of history books and in the Jewish Museum in Dublin.  Future blogs will focus on Jewish life and activities in Ireland today and the links between Ireland and Israel that with your help we can develop and expand.

Eamonn

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October 12, 2013 · 3:02 pm

Welcome to my blog

As Ambassador of Ireland to Israel, an important part of my job is to enhance the bilateral relationship between our two countries.  One way to do that is to explore the history of that relationship and to make it available to the general public.  Another way is to record some of the activities that come my way that offer insights into aspects of the life of both countries, sometimes related and sometimes not.  This is what you will find on my blog.  The blog about the history of the Litvak community in Ireland, my tour of Yad Vashem and my visit to UNTSO are the first examples of this from my new home here in Israel.

Prior to Israel, I served as Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, both complex societies with deep historical roots.  The exploration of the history of relations between Korea and Ireland turned out to be quite compelling: themes of empire, war and faith (both spiritual and secular) over-lapped and intersected.  As the accredited Ambassador, I had the opportunity of visiting Pyongyang and taking field trips to see the work of Irish NGO Concern and UN agencies, particularly the WFP.

Over the years of my posting (2009-13) I issued a series of Ambassador’s Messages via email to the Irish community in Korea and friends and contacts, including Koreans interested in the Irish relationship with Korea.  Many of these messages were of only contemporary interest such as assessments of the Irish economy or contingency planning during an emergency.  Some others though may have more enduring interest, such as information on the first Irishmen in Korea, the Irish Columban mission to Korea and Irish involvement in the Korean War.  They are now available on this blog.

The content of this blog is then offered by a serving Ambassador but the views expressed are my own.  You will notice themes that personally interest me; Ireland naturally and the stories of the Irish abroad, history and how its shapes us, culture and how it informs us, and the serendipitous connections that not only surprise us but in themselves create new narratives or recover lost ones.

As I found with the Ambassador’s Messages, the internet is a fertile new dimension enriching relations between people, connecting their current interests and activities, recovering their lost or forgotten stories.  I hope that this blog, from my privileged position between Ireland and Israel, helps to do just that.

Eamonn

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October 4, 2013 · 8:56 am

Irish Litvak Connection II: Commemorating the Shoah in Lithuania

While researching the background to my blog on the very strong Jewish Lithuanian connection with Ireland, and unbeknownst to me, the Fourth World Litvak Congress was being held in Vilnius.  As you will have read in the blog, most of the Lithuanian Jews who stayed there were murdered in the Shoah.  My friend and colleague in Vilnius, Ambassador Philomena Murnaghan, has kindly shared the following information on the Congress and the annual Holocaust commemoration in Lithuania.

The Fourth World Litvak Congress was held in Vilnius from 22-25 September and commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto on 23-24 September 1943.  Jews represented a third of the population of Vilnius before the Second World War.  The annual Holocaust commemoration takes place on the anniversary of that fateful day (23rd September) at the site in Paneriai forest, some 11 km from Vilnius city centre, where of the 100,000 persons executed there, some 70,000 were Jews.

The Fourth World Litvak Congress held a wide variety of events and exhibitions over the six days, including a conference on Sunday, 22nd  September on “Litvaks and their legacy: Holocaust, ethical memory and enlightenment”, moderated by Prof. Leonidas Donskis, MEP.   Events during the Congress sought to recapture the contribution of Lithuania’s former Jewish population to the Lithuanian nation and national development.  Some of the themes included: How art helps to perceive the Holocaust; Jewish organisations in Lithuania in documents prior to 1941; Kaunas Jewish community in historical sources; Jewish musicians in interwar Lithuania.  There were also tours for participants to Jewish-related sites in Vilnius and around the country.

Dr. Simonas Alperavicius, Honorary Chairman of The Jewish Community of Lithuania, was conferred with the Lithuanian Diplomacy Star, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ award of honour for his dedication to advancing bilateral relations between Lithuania and Israel and for his championing of democratic values throughout his life.

Philomena notes that the Congress was one of a range of events taking place in 2013, which has been designated by the Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) as the Year of Remembrance of the Vilnius Ghetto.   Bilateral relations between Lithuania and Israel have been strengthened, with visits in each direction this year, notably by the Lithuanian Foreign Minister to Israeli in May in preparation for the State Visit by the Israeli President to Vilnius at the end of July.

On Monday, 23rd September, members of the diplomatic corps took part, in large numbers as usual, in the annual commemoration of the Holocaust in Paneriai forest.  Philomena has seen this ceremony grow during her time in Vilnius and reflects:

 “Genuine efforts are being made to integrate study of the Holocaust into mainstream education and to engage young Lithuanians.  This year, pupils from 200 schools from around Lithuania lined the path leading into the fir grove where the Memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is situated.  Each student placed on the ground a candle and stone with the name of a Jewish person killed, forming a solemn avenue through which participants from the government, municipality, diplomatic corps, Jewish community and others passed on the way to the fir grove.   Wreaths were laid by or on behalf of the President, Government, Seimas, the Municipality, the Israeli Embassy Riga, the Jewish community, the diplomatic corps, Jewish survivors of the Vilnius Ghetto, and the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania.  Speeches were delivered by the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Seimas, the Israeli Ambassador, the President of the Jewish Community of Lithuania (Faina Kulkiansky), and by the International Commission.  A moving personal account was given by one of the very few remaining survivors of the Vilnius Ghetto, Fania Branncovskaya, and a haunting poem was read by the Headmaster of a local Jewish school.  The event concluded with the reading of Kadesh by a member of the Jewish community and the playing of the Vilnius Ghetto ‘anthem’.”

Thanks to Philomena for sharing this and to the Deputy Head ofMission Seadha MacHugh for tweeting the blog on the Irish Litvak relationship to the Embassy’s followers in Lithuania.

ENDS

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