In 2017, construction began on two elevators designed to take visitors and worshippers to the Western Wall. It was soon halted when it became clear that the site contained an archaeological treasure trove. Six years later, the subsequent excavation has ended, and construction of the elevators can begin. Ilan Ben Zion describes what they found:

During their dig, the archaeologists carefully peeled back successive layers of construction and debris that had accumulated over two millennia, over 9 meters (30 feet) in total. Historical waypoints included Ottoman pipes built into a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that supplied Jerusalem with water from springs near Bethlehem; early Islamic oil lamps; bricks stamped with the name of the 10th Legion, the Roman army that besieged, destroyed, and was afterwards encamped in Jerusalem two millennia ago; and the remains of the Judean villa from the final days before the ancient Jewish Temple’s destruction in the year 70.

Fragments of frescoes and intricate mosaics from the villa indicated the wealth of the home’s occupants. But upon reaching bedrock, [the archaeologists] made one last find: a private Jewish ritual bath hewn into the limestone mountainside and vaulted with enormous dressed stones.

[Hebrew University’s Michal] Haber said the most significant thing about the bath, known as a mikveh, was its location overlooking the Temple esplanade. “We are in the wealthy neighborhood of the city on the eve of its destruction,” she said.

Prime Minister Varadkar’s meretricious messaging concerning the freeing of a kidnapped child is only one example of the Irish government’s perverse reaction to Hamas’s assault on Israel. Varadkar has accused the IDF of pursuing “something approaching revenge” in Gaza, and compared the Israeli war effort to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His parliament, meanwhile, came close to expelling the Israeli ambassador. Terry Glavin writes:

In a recent interview, . . . the retired Irish diplomat Niall Holohan put it this way: “We feel we have been victimized over the centuries. It’s part of our psyche—underneath it all we side with the underdog.” But there’s something else in the Irish psyche that’s impolite to mention in the comfy Dublin pubs and bistros. . . . Not a few of Ireland’s gallant and celebrated champions of the underdog, its heroes of Irish freedom, were vulgar anti-Semites and Nazi collaborators.

And in recent years, Irish Jews are commonly baited, harassed, and badgered every time there is some eruption in Israel involving Palestinian “resistance.”

The republican pamphleteer Arthur Griffith approved [of anti-Jewish agitation in Limerick in 1904], calling Jews “usurers and parasites.” Griffiths was one of the founders of Sinn Féin, in 1905, and he served as Sinn Féin’s president in 1911.

There was always a deep division in the Irish nationalist movement between Irish republicans who felt an affinity with the Jews owing to a shared history of dispossession and exile, and Catholic extremists who ranted and raved about Jews. Those Catholic shouters are still abroad, apparently unaware that for half a century, Catholic doctrine has established that anti-Semitism is a mortal sin.