Editorial: Pan nationalism is united in being soft on Hamas, and has now inflicted that symbolically on Belfast

​The County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast issued a statement yesterday on the flying of the Palestine flag outside Belfast City Hall.

They said “the republican and pan nationalist members of Belfast City Council are supporting division”.

How apt it was of the County Grand Orange lodge to use the phrase pan nationalist front. Rarely has nationalist Ireland seemed as united as in recent years.

It is united in the idea that the grotesque sight of of a rap band Kneecap using the imagery of a republican balaclava is hilarious.

It is united that the ‘ooh ah up the rah’ chant is harmless.

It is united in its anglophobia, which long predates partition and never went away, but came to the fore in Irish superiority and sneering over Brexit, then covid.

It is united in the idea that unionists should ‘join the conversation’ about a ‘new Ireland’, a farcical concept that is correct only in the sense that this new Ireland retrospectively embraces the Provisional movement far more than Irish people who lived through the IRA did.

And it is united in the idea that in the event of this supposedly inevitable new all island, there will be no concessions at all to unionists. Polls so that the population of the Irish Republic is so anglophobic it won’t even join that friendly association, the Commonwealth.

But nothing illustrates the new Ireland better than its support for Hamas. They don’t put it like that. Even Sinn Fein hesitate in backing those Islamic mass murderers. But that is what in effect nationalist Ireland has done.

The Palestinian flag supposedly represents the non-existent state of Palestine, but in effect is used to celebrate the most visible current element of that, the barbarians who rule Gaza. It is shameful that the Union flag cannot fly over Northern Ireland’s capital city but the pan nationalist front has ensured that a symbol linked to Hamas does.