Robert Emmet Briscoe (25 September 1894 – 29 May 1969)[1] was an Orthodox Jewish veteran of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and a Fianna Fáil politician of Lithuanian descent.

[8][1] Abraham Briscoe – known universally as Pappa – had arrived in Ireland as a 14-year old immigrant from the shtetl of Zagar, Kovno Governorate,[9][10] and made a living first as a brush salesman and then as a merchant of imported tea.

[11] After meeting her while travelling on business, Abraham Briscoe had married Ida Yoedicke,[5][12][7] the fourth daughter of a successful Lithuanian Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main.

[13] In direct contradiction to "standard anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jews as avaricious, cheap, clannish, unethical and unpatriotic",[14] Abraham Briscoe felt a very deep sense of gratitude for the better life and freedom from religious persecution that emigrating from Tsarist Lithuania to Ireland had granted him and his family.

His son later wrote, "To Father the soft green hills of Dublin Harbour were the sheltering arms of justice and Ireland seemed the very land of liberty - though he soon learned to think differently.

Pappa Briscoe often encouraged the children of their South Dublin synagogue to play pranks on known moneylenders during services for the Sabbath and the High Holy Days.

[20] Furthermore, when his son Robert began courting a, "certain very beautiful Jewish girl", Abraham Briscoe told him, "I hear you are keeping company with Esther.

"[1][24] In what caused years of sharp political arguments with his father, Robert Briscoe rejected his Home Rule nationalist upbringing and instead embraced Irish republicanism.

Due to his fluency in the German language from his family's pre-WWI business connections, Collins ultimately issued orders through Irish Jewish barrister Michael Noyk[26] to send Briscoe to the Weimar Republic to be the chief agent for procuring arms for the IRA.

[28] In December 1920, Charles McGuinness was made captain of a ship by the name the "Anita" and sent to the Weimar Republic, where Briscoe had already purchased a large number of firearms.

Also, during his assignment in Berlin, Briscoe first came into conflict with and complained to his superior John Smith Chartres about fellow Sinn Fein envoy Charles Bewley.

Bewley, however, had friends in high places and was not recalled under much later [32] Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty and during the lead-up to the Irish Civil War, Briscoe found himself being courted by both sides, but felt greater sympathies for the anti-Treaty IRA.

Despite his mother's advice, when his anti-Treaty IRA friends effectively served him with an ultimatum, Briscoe joined them in armed struggle against the new Irish Free State.

In June 1922, Briscoe was involved in an incident with fellow anti-treaty IRA members who attacked pro-treaty politician Darrell Figgis at his home.

During the Second World War, Briscoe, at this time a member of Dáil Éireann, was placed under close surveillance by the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence and the Garda Siochana Special Branch.

His covert activities in support for Zionism and his lobbying on behalf of refugees were also considered potentially damaging to the interests of the Irish State by senior civil service officials from the Department of Justice.

[40][41] Between 1939 and 1940, Robert Briscoe worked closely with former British Army Colonel and Tsavo Valley lion hunter John Henry Patterson, the former officer commanding of both the Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Legion during the First World War.

[43][better source needed] Jabotinsky, while head of Irgun, visited Dublin for secret instruction from Robert Briscoe in how the tactics of guerrilla warfare that had proven so successful during the Irish War of Independence could also be used against the continued rule of the British Empire over the Mandate of Palestine.

[45] Briscoe also campaigned for political asylum to be granted to Jewish refugees seeking to flee Nazi Germany, both before and during the Holocaust, but he did so discreetly in order not to be accused of compromising the neutrality policy of the Fianna Fáil government.

[46] Briscoe notably had ugly spats with Irish trade envoy to Nazi Germany and avowed anti-Semite Charles Bewley, who tried to thwart his effort to help German Jewish refugees gain visas for Ireland during the war.

After the Second World War, Briscoe acted as a special advisor to Menachem Begin in the transformation of Irgun from a paramilitary organisation into the Herut political party (later Likud) in the new State of Israel.

In this capacity, he often travelled abroad to negotiate trade deals in behalf of the Irish Republic and was famously photographed lighting a menorah in New York City.