In the same week that violent anti-immigrant riots broke out in the western suburbs of Dublin, voters in the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly elected Catherine Connolly, an independent leftist who has been strongly critical of Israel, the U.S. and the NATO alliance, as their next president. That’s less a contradiction than a reflection of the deep divisions beneath the peaceful, prosperous surface of Irish society.

Those divisions have nothing to do with Connolly’s views on Israel and Palestine, by the way, which are basically the default setting in Irish politics — up to and including the current center-right government (which she opposes). If the U.S. media has largely framed this news as “Ireland elects pro-Palestinian radical,” that says more about our country than about hers. (The

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