Gerry Adams' decision to meet with Hamas will come as little surprise to those familiar with Irish Republicanism's attitude toward Israel. The movement has enjoyed a cosy collaborative relationship with the Arab enemies of Israel since the early 1970s, when Libya's Colonel Muammar Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat's PLO began supplying the IRA with the financial, military and logistic assistance it required to prosecute its brutal anti-British offensive. For instance, Republican terrorists were trained by the PLO in both Libya and Lebanon, while four Libyan arms shipments in the mid-1980s helped reinvigorate the IRA's floundering campaign. By this time, contact had also been established with Hezbollah, which led, intelligence sources believe, to the development of new terrorist tactics such as the secondary mine attacks that were used with deadly effect against the Israeli army in South Lebanon and British forces in Northern Ireland.

Concerns about continuing Irish-Arab paramilitary cooperation were behind Israel's investigation into the possibility of Republican involvement in the March 2002 shooting of 10 IDF soldiers near Ofra while the discovery of "exact replicas" of IRA-issue pipe-bombs in the ruins of Jenin one month later aroused further suspicions of ongoing links.

Although dissidents continue to maintain contacts with Arab terrorist outfits, mainstream Republican support for the Palestinians has been purely political since the end of the IRA war. But while Adams personally adopts a moderate tone toward Israel, his party remains bitterly hostile to what it once called "the obnoxious phenomenon that is Zionism." Last June, for example, Sinn Fein's spokesman on International Affairs described Israel as "without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet" and it has repeatedly called for the suspension of Jerusalem's preferential trading status with the EU on the grounds of its "horrific crimes against humanity."

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Meanwhile, the official party weekly recently accused the IDF of perpetrating a "massacre" in Lebanon, intentionally devastating its infrastructure and "deliberately bombing [its] children" in a war which Sinn Fein claimed was the result of "continued Israeli aggression, expansion and occupation in the region" (it subsequently called for a UNIFIL presence on the Israeli side of the Blue Line).

Sinn Fein members are also prominently involved in non-party anti-Israel activism in Ireland. Indeed, the Belfast branch of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) appears little more than a subset of the Republican movement and, interestingly, is one forum in which internal political differences are put to one side; mainstream Sinn Fein members work alongside convicted IRA terrorists, while dissidents are also represented.

The often vitriolic nature of Republicanism's anti-Israel campaign has, unsurprisingly, given rise to accusations of anti-Semitism. Sinn Fein's apparent indifference to the frustrated nationalisms of the Tibetans, Chechens and Kurds has also posed questions about Republicanism's preoccupation with Palestine. Certainly, the movement is tainted with an anti-Semitic history. Arthur Griffith, who founded the original Sinn Fein in 1905, was a virulent anti-Semite who used the pages of his newspapers to rant against Jewish "usurers and parasites." While similar prejudices were commonplace in all the political parties that sprang from his organization, only the eponymous rump that remained after the splits of 1921 and 1926 habitually preached Jew-hatred, culminating in a demand for an Irish-German alliance in 1939.

The IRA did attempt to forge a working relationship with the Nazis, but the death of its leader, Sean Russell, on a U-boat bound for Ireland on a mission sanctioned by Ribbentrop dashed their hopes; he was buried at sea with full military honors, his body wrapped in a Nazi flag (the current Sinn Fein chairperson caused an outcry when she spoke at an IRA commemoration for Russell in August 2003).

In the period after World War II, anti-Semitic concerns continued to shape the world view of many in the Republican movement. Its official newspaper, the United Irishman, attacked "Jewish finance," "Judaeo-Masonic news agencies" and the Jews themselves as "the bitter enemies of Christianity," persuading the generally left-wing Republican rank-and-file that there was a Jewish-capitalist plot to take over the state. Some joined the viciously anti-Semitic Maria Duce movement and became active in the 1950s in campaigning against such dark instruments of the international Jewish conspiracy as Larry Adler and Danny Kaye!

While such overt anti-Semitism has not been a feature of Irish Republicanism since the movement regrouped in the 1960s, the frequency with which its anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line of legitimate criticism has been a cause of recent concern. Graffiti supporting suicide bombers and officially-sanctioned murals glorifying Palestinian terrorism are commonplace in Republican areas, giving the ubiquitous Palestinian flags a more sinister complexion. Furthermore, Israel is routinely equated with the Third Reich; placards superimposing swastikas over Stars of David are commonplace at demonstrations as are banners calling for an end to "Israeli genocide" and the "Palestinian holocaust." Republican-penned articles have referred to "Hitler speaking Hebrew," "fascist Israeli soldiers in jackboots" and the "Julius Streicher-type tyrant" Ariel Sharon. And in 2002, the Belfast IPSC attempted to prevent the Yossi Yungman Dance Company performing at the annual City Festival to protest at the implementation of Israel's "barbaric racist policies in the name of Judaism" (IPSC Christmas cards have blatantly evoked Christian anti-Judaic themes). Anti-Semitic undertones in Republican criticisms of former Northern Ireland minister Peter Mandelson, have been cited as additional evidence that there is more to all of this than anti-Zionism.

In spite of this, the modern Irish Republican movement can no longer be described as anti-Semitic per se. Yet, a century-old undercurrent cannot be lightly ignored. One way or another this much is clear - in a century of all-consuming struggle against England, Republicans have always found time to criticize the Jews.

Sean Gannon is a freelance writer and researcher, specializing in Irish and Israeli affairs. He is currently preparing a book on the relationship between the two countries.