Sunday's Ireland-Israel football match will mark a low point for my country

Bill Shankly famously remarked: “some people think football is a matter of life and death… I can assure them it is much more serious than that”

The upcoming Nations League ‘home’ match between the Republic of Ireland and Israel on 4 October supports this hypothesis. It will be played in the empty and inauspicious surroundings of the TSC Arena in Bačka Topola, Serbia, just 3 days before the anniversary of 7 October.

Ireland’s pre-eminent and now perhaps post-factual reputation for Cead Mile Failte (one hundred thousand welcomes) does not apply to the people of Israel. It did however apply recently to the team from Qatar – the Irish had no problem welcoming the main funders of Hamas-led Gaza and a country with a long documented history of human rights violations against women, migrant
workers and the LGBTQ+ community.

Irish sport in general, and football in particular, has been at the forefront of the self-described “Paddystinian” movement which has engulfed the country, insidiously pervading every aspect of Irish society.

This is no better exemplified than within the rabidly Israel hating FAI (football
association of Ireland). This match has been the target of Paddystinians ever since the fixture list was drawn five months ago. Widespread and unrelenting commentary has followed, which has reached hysterical, lunatic levels in the last few days. Any opportunity to demonise Israel and to explain why the Irish football team must not be tainted by playing a “white colonial genocidal apartheid’ nation has been exploited. Such people seem determined never to let a fact get in the way of a good story. Not one of those descriptors has any basis in truth, of course.

Football pundits on Irish TV with as much knowledge of Middle Eastern history as
Father Ted had of Christianity, feel able to opine eruditely about ‘Gaza and the genocide’. The Irish FA have tried every trick to avoid playing this match and are only doing so on pain of retribution by UEFA. Their attempt to have Israel ejected from all UEFA competition failed, not a single other Football Association backed Ireland.

And so they refused to host the home match. The media are boycotting it and there is enormous pressure on the players not to play. Indeed, more than pressure, menacing threats.

The Irish Times reported on Sept 16 that a TD (a member of parliament) advised Irish footballers to “follow the lead” of musicians withdrawing from Ed Sheeran’s US tour and advised those players who “toe the line” (ie play) that “it will be noted”.

Given the proximity to 7 October, one might have imagined the players will offer some recognition of this darkest of days, with a solemn show of support and understanding, maybe an engraved plaque. But that would be indeed only in our imagination. No Irish player will likely dare swap shirts or even shake hands. I would not rule out them turning their backs during the playing of Hatikvah.

The FAI have even pushed yet further down a rabbit hole last week, proposing that
Ireland not be drawn against Israel in any future competition – a rare exception that
UEFA has only ever applied on a few occasions, and between countries in direct
conflict. This was roundly rejected by the European footballing body.

Donald Trump said, while visiting Ireland last week, that “there’s a friendliness, there’s also a viciousness and a toughness. Let me tell you. You’re some of the most vicious bastards I’ve ever done business [with]”. Maybe he had the FAI in mind?

Ireland is an outlier, not in terms of criticisms of Israeli government policy, albeit robust, nor its understandable empathy with the plight of Palestinians stuck in the tragic rubble of Gaza, but in its self appointed role as the moral guardian of the world; a surrogate opponent to Israel in this conflict (not militarily, as their army would barely form a Minyan on a good day).

Ireland, aside from a courageous minority, sees the conflict through one lens only, its other obscured by a hate-virus induced cataract, blinding it to any understanding of, or empathy for, the suffering of Israelis.

The Paddystinian epidemic is dangerous – as Lord Chalfont said in a debate in the
UK’s House of Lords in 1995, warning Parliament it must “contemplate and confront the dangerous implications of single issue politics.”

Israel will have a chance on the pitch to make a start by achieving a victory against this hate and demonisation.

Shankly was right.