‘We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way.
‘Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity, We’re playing against the coach who embodies them.’
Well.
In my part of the country, we’d describe that Tweet (yep, it’s still a Tweet) from the Israel FA as showing ‘pure ignorance’.
Never mind the utter rudeness of this public message, the – checks notes – stupidity involved is off the scale.
I have checked, double-checked, and then triple-checked – and can find not one single mention of a Nobel Prize having been awarded to the Israel FA.
If they mean Nobel Prizes awarded to people from Israel then even that is a matter for debate.
Of the 14 names listed only ONE was actually born in Israel. Two others moved there, one aged 9, the other 13.
So, let’s say three.
Five of the names listed were born in British Mandatory Palestine. Three more moved to Palestine from eastern Europe (two of those when aged in their 20s).
The other three were born in the USA, South Africa, and Germany.
Being kind, then, that’s 11 Nobel prizes for those ‘from’ Palestine/ Israel.
Not be sniffed at – and the same as Ireland, which has a smaller population.
Given their relative populations, one for Iceland (in Literature) is good going.
Israel has announced it will press ahead with the E1 settlement east of Jerusalem, which would effectively cut the West Bank in two (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP) (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
What the Israel FA HAS ‘achieved’ in recent years, however, is not something they’d be boasting about on social media, or even on anti-social media like Twitter/X.
Earlier this year, FIFA finally announced that its Disciplinary Committee had found the Israel FA guilty of failing to punish racist incidents and anti-Arab discrimination, mostly relating to the West Bank in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
That FIFA ruling stated: “The IFA’s inaction in the face of entrenched discriminatory conduct and its failure to condemn or distance itself from politicized and militaristic messaging have collectively undermined the ethical foundation of the sport of football.
“These omissions amount to regulatory breaches as much as a failure in leadership and governance that have allowed discrimination and division to take root within football structures under the IFA’s jurisdiction.
“Moreover, the exclusion of Palestinians from football infrastructure in Israeli settlements, due to discriminatory movement restrictions and permit regimes, constitutes a de facto system of segregation.
“The IFA’s refusal to acknowledge or address this exclusion, and its reliance on jurisdictional arguments to deflect responsibility, further entrenches the perception of institutional complicity in practices that violate FIFA’s commitment to human rights and non-discrimination.”
Israeli army soldiers patrol the streets of the occupied West Bank village of Qusra (Majdi Mohammed/AP) (Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Further on, FIFA said: “The violations are not the result of isolated misjudgments but of a sustained failure to act in accordance with football’s most fundamental values.
“In light of the above, the Committee concludes that the breaches committed by the IFA are of such gravity and seriousness as to merit severe and exemplary sanctions.”
Of course, FIFA being FIFA, they basically did FA.
A ‘slap on the wrist’ fine. A warning. Ordered to display some banners and do other flim-flam.
Of course, what the current genocidal government of Israel is much worse than it’s FA’s pathetic pettiness.
Yes, genocidal.
What twisted the panties of that Tweeting intern, and the Israel FA as a whole, were these comments from Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson:
“We are not playing with genocide, we are playing against genocide. We are playing against Israel; we are not playing with Israel.”
Anyone who says and/or believes that the ‘war’ between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023 is either stupid, or thinks their audience is stupid – or both.
Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu not only allowed Qatari funding of Hamas up until that October 7, he and his Likud party promoted and encouraged Hamas, in order to split the movement towards a Palestinian state and to do down the Palestinian Authority.
It has been claimed in a book by journalist from Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Netanyahu had prior knowledge of the atrocious attacks.
Benjamin Netanyahu with Donald Trump (Alex Brandon/AP) (Alex Brandon/AP)
Still, I have never supported paramilitary violence.
I have condemned Hamas’s awful attacks on October 7 – yet it is clear to anyone with a working moral compass that Israel’s response has been a disgusting over-reaction.
There’s a terrible irony that many Israelis and Jews are now genocide-deniers.
‘How can it be a genocide when so many Gazans are still alive?’, they ask, believing they have made a killer point.
The very fact that they’re able to ask that question answers it.
Genocide does not mean the complete destruction of a people.
Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip have more than met the criteria to be correctly labelled ‘genocide’.
The declarations of certain Israeli government ministers make clear their desire to eradicate the Palestinian people.
Yes, Hamas wish to commit genocide too. They are appalling as well.
But Hamas are not backed and armed by the UK and US governments, as Israel are.
The Republic of Ireland is not being asked to play against a Hamas XI.
The key issue is this: What is ‘genocide’?
‘The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
‘Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
‘The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:
Killing members of the groupCausing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the groupDeliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in partImposing measures intended to prevent births within the groupForcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’
Not my words, but those from the website of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Israel ticks all five of those awful boxes.
Crews search for bodies and survivors in the rubble (Jehad Alshrafi/AP) (Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
More than a year ago the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel publicly declared that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In June of this year that UN body found that Israel “deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children”, and that the killings continued even after last October’s ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza.
The commission says it has reasonable grounds to conclude that those acts “form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children”.
So Heimir Hallgrímsson is quite correct in what he said – and no amount of ignorant and stupid Tweeting can cover up Israel’s crimes against humanity.