{"id":135824,"date":"2026-05-29T05:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/135824\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T05:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:28:09","slug":"when-it-comes-to-the-ireland-israel-match-we-cannot-ignore-what-is-going-on-in-palestine-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/135824\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to the Ireland-Israel match, we cannot ignore what is going on in Palestine \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 The debate about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\">Ireland<\/a> vs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\">Israel<\/a> football match is quite disturbing. It is argued by some, quite reasonably, that sport and politics should be kept separate. But what has been happening in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/palestine\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/palestine\/\">Palestine<\/a> (and now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/lebanon\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/lebanon\/\">Lebanon<\/a>) is not simply \u201cpolitics\u201d \u2013 it is a human rights crime. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Israel is not a normal, rational, peace-loving nation. It is a rogue state committing genocide against the Palestinian people. And they are using sporting and cultural events such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uefa\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uefa\">Uefa<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-league\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-league\/\">Nations League<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eurovision\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eurovision\/\">Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> to present themselves as a normal country and society.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Uefa should never have allowed Israel participate in this league. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/football-association-of-ireland-fai\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/football-association-of-ireland-fai\/\">FAI<\/a> have been placed in an impossible situation where they don\u2019t want to play, but are forced to. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Normally governments should not have to intervene in the administration of national sporting or cultural organisations. But this crisis has gone too far and Government must intervene. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/department-of-justice\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/department-of-justice\">Department of Justice<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/department-of-foreign-affairs\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/department-of-foreign-affairs\/\">Department of Foreign Affairs<\/a> can step forward here and refuse to allow the Israeli team personnel to enter Ireland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">If the FAI decide to play the game in some neutral country then that is their decision. But the Irish Government must intervene to stop the game being played in Ireland. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">ART \u00d3 LAOGHAIRE,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Bray, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Co Wicklow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 The debate about the Ireland vs Israel football match is quite disturbing. It is argued by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[13824,32886,26026,4002,37,93,4004,498,4003,4005],"class_list":["post-135824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-department-of-justice","tag-department-of-foreign-affairs","tag-eurovision","tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-nations-league","tag-palestine","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-uefa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116656216578695232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}