Ruth Dudley Edwards: I’ll wear my ‘I Stand With Israel’ badge in public for as long as it’s necessary

So I purchased a badge saying “I Stand With Israel” for the London march against anti-Semitism last Sunday and will go on wearing it publicly until there’s no more need to indicate what I think of Jew-haters.

This event was intended to give ordinary people the chance to show their sympathy for their Jewish neighbours over the terrible events of October 7, the brutal murders, tortures and the savage rapes, and our distress that so many of our Jewish friends are feeling fearful in their own country.

We came in our tens of thousands, carrying placards like “Shoulder to Shoulder with British Jews”.

More sobering was “Act Against Hate Before It’s Too Late”.

There are few Jews in Ireland and because the political classes are increasingly left wing, anti-semitism is rife, tiny Israel, fighting for its life, is seen as a bully and Arabs are automatically seen as victims.

The only hostage shown any interest was Emily Hand, whose father Thomas is Irish.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s clunking response began: “An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and our country breathes a massive sigh of relief.”

But she was not lost, but stolen. And the relative who stepped in from the time she was two and her mother died of cancer, was shot dead on October 7 by Hamas.

Varadkar excused the language as Biblical, but it was a story from the New, not Old, Testament and about the prodigal son, who had left home voluntarily.

No wonder Israel is fuming.

And now to Dublin, about which my companions and people we met were curious. What led to the riots? they asked. Is there really a dangerous rise of the far right?

I told them this is largely imaginary: Irish violence is largely inspired by crazed nationalist fanatics and reactive loyalists, and, these days, the hard left.

It is republicanism that since 1916 legitimised undemocratic terrorism: Sinn Fein work tirelessly to secure retrospective legitimacy for the IRA’s thirty years of bloody murder. Every day they eulogise a terrorist, they justify violence from the disaffected.

At root, the self-satisfied, self-righteous Irish political classes have in recent years created the conditions for revolt. Self-delusion is the order of the day. Having turned their backs on the Catholic church, they are comfortably left of centre and happy to dismiss as far right or fascist anyone who questions their consensus, which involves suppressing embarrassing facts. Gript Media, to which I subscribe, is the place to go to read what authority would rather you didn’t know.

In Britain, Brexit happened because most politicians were failing to listen to legitimate concerns about immigration, social cohesion, and showed general contempt for the white underclass.

In the Republic, it is similar, but worse. The country is bedevilled with the “aren't we great?” syndrome. It prides itself having a PR voting system that keeps its parliamentary representatives closer to their constituents than do their British equivalents.

But unlike Britain, it doesn't have true freedom of speech. Sinn Fein are the prime suppressors, with international press freedom organisations suggesting they’re running “a co-ordinated campaign against the media in Ireland”.

“Ireland’s experience of mass migration, despite its elites’ sense of moral superiority, has been very similar to Brexit Britain’s,” wrote Tim Stanley in the Sunday Telegraph.

“The difference is we talk about it, and while having parties like Ukip might do little for our global reputation, it does act as a pressure valve for discontent. Ireland, by contrast, has chosen to double-down on the liberal narrative and Varadkar has even promised new laws to police hate speech, only driving debate into the darker recesses of the internet or, one fears, back on to the streets.”

The hate speech bill is so authoritarian you could get 12 months in jail for refusing to reveal your passwords if you’re suspected of committing hate speech.

Sinn Fein seem to like it.