You guys are right, it has absolutely nothing to do with recognizing the sovereignty of my country, I'm just a racist. Not sure why I bother to hang out here anymore.
Doesn't make you a racist, just means you have accepted a widespread cultural trope (that itself has racist implications) without consciously thinking about it. I mean it's just a fact that people seem to be able to fly Irish flags, say, in the US, without any such criticisms. Remember seeing Italian and Polish ones a lot as well. Likewise Israeli ones.
People never stop arguing about flags over here. The usual complaint is that it's considered more acceptable to fly the Irish flag than the English Cross-of-St-Geroge (though the historical St George was probably Turkish-Palestinian, just to _really_ complicate things)