{"id":185491,"date":"2026-07-01T05:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/185491\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T05:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:23:09","slug":"ireland-israel-soccer-match-could-have-been-avoided-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/185491\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland-Israel soccer match could have been avoided \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir , \u2013 The main issue with not playing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\/\">Israel<\/a> game is that it is already arranged. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uefa\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uefa\/\">Uefa<\/a>\u2019s penalties exist to avoid logistical inconvenience. Had 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> or the Government been proactive and banned playing them before the draw took place, Uefa could have made provisions to prevent this. They already prevent certain countries from being drawn together.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">We should play the games as arranged, but ban future sports and cultural participation with Israel. This would signal to all similar international sporting\/cultural bodies that games and events between Ireland and Israel should be prevented. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This would send a strong message that cultural normalisation will not be extended to Israel while their genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, annexation of the West Bank and imprisonment without trial of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, continue. Simultaneously, it would avoid our teams, players and fans being penalised. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">BRYAN BUTLER,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Templeogue,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin 6W.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir , \u2013 The main issue with not playing the Israel game is that it is already arranged.&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":[4002,2254,37,4005],"class_list":["post-185491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","tag-gaza-strip","tag-israel","tag-uefa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116843053262089974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185491","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=185491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185491\/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=185491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}