The debate over whether Israel should formally establish diplomatic relations with Germany was an impassioned, often vicious, deeply emotional probing of national trauma. It came long after Israel’s internal fight over whether to accept German reparations, which nearly tore the government apart. By the time the two countries proposed exchanging ambassadors, the wound had clearly not yet healed, and maybe never would.

In the end, diplomatic pragmatism and a shared hope for moving forward prevailed. Israel’s first embassy in Germany was opened in 1965.

Do you know when Israel’s embassy in Ireland was established? 1996.

So please, Irish President Michael Higgins and Prime Minister Simon Harris, spare us the feigned offense and the community-theater histrionics and the supposed shock in reaction to Israel’s announcement that it would close its embassy in Dublin. Ireland’s history with Israel is uniquely shameful among supposed Western democracies. Whether that justifies the closing of the embassy is another matter, but let’s stop pretending we’re talking about a normal situation. Ireland was the last EU country to host an Israeli embassy, and the gesture was watered down by making the same offer to the PLO, a terrorist organization that did not represent an existing nation-state.

Here’s the point: Ireland has always treated Israel with special contempt. Decades after Eamon de Valera offered Germany his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, the country he helped found seemed permanently stuck in time. Ireland had to be dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing the Jews. The Israeli embassy barely predates the Good Friday Agreement.

This is not ancient history, in other words. The closing of the Israeli embassy in Dublin, whatever its merits, is not the end of an era; it’s the end of an insulting modern experiment that Irish leaders spent a couple decades routinely sabotaging. Irish leaders thought they could have a Jewish pet who would crawl around on all fours and eat out of a bowl on the floor. And they have the chutzpah to scold him as he stands up on two feet and walks out.

Stories such as this tend to be followed by days of chin-stroking articles about the innate Irish sympathy for the Palestinians’ plight. After all, we’re told again and again, the Irish are anti-imperialist to the core and cannot stomach Palestinian statelessness. But that’s infantilizing nonsense and the Irish should be insulted by it. The problem is not sympathy, and it never was. The problem is that Irish leaders express their sympathy for the Palestinians in ways that ought to shame them. For example, Ireland recently announced it would intervene in the ICJ case against Israel by urging the court to change the definition of “genocide” mid-trial just so Israel could be found guilty. You know which other European countries have sympathy for the Palestinians? All of them. You know which other European countries filed the same intervention? None of them.

Also, the “sympathy” argument requires one to ignore the actual history of the conflict. Israel offered both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas everything the Palestinians claimed to want and they walked away from it anyway. Gerry Adams could only dream of getting such a deal. It’s a wonder the Irish don’t resent the Palestinians instead.

The first Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Zvi Gabay, recounts in his memoirs the many excuses Irish leaders deployed to decline to allow an Israeli embassy. They said Ireland had no de jure recognition of Israel, but well after such recognition was established they found other excuses. Non-resident ambassadors between the countries were established after Ireland joined the European Union and was told to comply with basic diplomatic decorum. Israel’s establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican did help in smoothing ties, but “the loss of beef exports from Ireland to Libya and Iraq were also factors that led to the change of Ireland’s Middle East policy and eventually its policy towards Israel.”

In other words, self-interest. Which makes the world go round, after all. And perhaps one day it will be sufficient to mend ties between the two countries once again. But for now, Higgins and the rest can stop the bellyaching; Ireland is only losing something it never wanted in the first place.