Unionist/Loyalist Identification With Outside Groups

I posted a while back about Republican shows of solidarity with revolutionary movements around the world, and promised I'd discuss the Unionist/Loyalist counterpart to that. Rejoice, for that time has arrived!

For Republicans, murals showing solidarity serve to position the movement among righteous crusaders for civil rights and self determination; in the case of the Loyalists, my read is that the counterpart murals serve more to help create and also subtly redefine an Ulster identity. This can be seen in a number of murals which show Ulstermen who came to America (and their descendants):



I was a bit surprised to also see analogies to the Confederacy:


The common theme here is that the Ulter people are warriors and patriots who will fight for the country they deem their own (see Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb). The 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme was being commemorated while we were in Belfast. Both sides fought for the British in WWI, but again the Unionists were particulary proud of their contributions at the Somme, both in terms of their historic loyalty to the crown, but also specifically as Ulstermen.

On a separate front, Israeli flags can be seen in many unionist neighborhoods. We were told by some that this was purely as a reaction to the Nationalist sympathy with Palestine, but I think it runs deeper than that. Certainly one can see parallells with the "dirty war" of the troubles or with competing claims to self-determination.