This was a difficult read. Ireland’s profound and eternal shame. ‘Hand said that while he still viewed himself as an Irishman and truly loved the country, he had been left “very disappointed” by the land of his birth. He said that despite the enormity of the shadow cast over people’s lives by the events of October 7, he believed the Hamas attacks had not had a lasting impact on public consciousness in Ireland.  “That was forgotten within two days. My daughter was kidnapped for 50 days. My ex-wife, who is the mother of my two older kids, was killed. Shot in the stomach, shot in the neck. I have a hundred people that I know that were murdered that day. I have 30 friends and people that I know that were kidnapped that day.”’ Remember this every time Irish officials pontificate on an international stage about how our anti-Israel stance is driven by ‘humanity’ and ‘our history’. Ask them this: where was the humanity towards an Irishman whose ex-wife was murdered and daughter was kidnapped? Where was the empathy towards one of our own who has *actual* family history in our nation, not simply a claim to it due to an imposed narrative of ‘parallel struggles’? They won’t have an answer for you. Because they know very well that we betrayed little Emily Hand, a kidnapped Irish child that our then Taoiseach egregiously described as ‘lost and found’. A poster of her was viciously torn to shreds in my hometown of Dún Laoghaire, which is incidentally Tom Hand’s hometown also. The shame of it all is unbearable.