Double Minorities

As if responding to complaints reported at Fi Fie Foe Fum that Irish bloggers haven't had much to say about the Ariel Sharon health crisis, Niall Ferguson in the Sunday Telegraph provides some nice bait:

the Israeli predicament is strongly reminiscent of the Ulster Protestants'. Both Israel and Northern Ireland are, after all, legacies of British imperialism, the former descended from the Jewish "national home" proclaimed in 1917, and the latter descended from the partition of Ireland four years later. In both cases, those whose ancestors were settlers face relative demographic decline today. In both cases, those who question the legitimacy of the original colonisation - the descendants of the indigenous peoples - have turned to terrorism. In both cases, their more moderate representatives claim to embrace the ballot box, while the extremists hang on to their bombs. The difference, of course, is that the Ulster Protestants have scarcely any friends abroad, whereas the Israelis can still regard America as the principal guarantor of their continued existence. And that is, perhaps, the most important point of all.

Now this is a recurring analogy and there is a cottage industry of arguing about which group in Northen Ireland is more like which group in Israel (and things can get farcical in that regard). But we're not sure if Niall is the best person to be analyzing the nationalist impulse, having written in the same slot the previous week:

The Scots can keep their accents, just as Yorkshiremen keep theirs. They can keep their lawyers, too; I would hate to send any more business the way of those fat London barristers. But the idea that Scotland might one day "be a nation again" should simply be dropped. We had our chance, when everyone else in Europe had it, in the 19th and 20th centuries. But we calculated that the Union and the Empire were a better bet than independence. Well, live with it.

More specifically, we take issue with this clause from his Israel article:

the Ulster Protestants have scarcely any friends abroad

Not abroad, no -- but across the sea, Britain provides a much more practical and nearby guarantee than the US provides to Israel. Of course there's a demographic trend "favouring" Catholics and Palestinians, but just to make one of many possible objections, the total number of Irish Catholics on the island is much smaller than the total number of Arabs around Israel. But anyway, one cheer for Ferguson (which is probably more than he'd get in Glasgow) for providing grist for the mill.