We have been consistent in our reporting on the challenges that arose when Israel were drawn to play in the same group as the Republic of Ireland in the Nations League.
Everyone involved was put in an impossible position as soon as the balls fell the wrong way.
We have tried to counsel against reducing this to a visceral argument that engaging with Israel in any form equates to support for genocide. That position of moral certainty is enviable, but it is much easier to say, write, or chant than to reason with in a complex interconnected world.
I would feel more comfortable if I could be so certain and so absolute.
But if the belief is genuine, and for the vast majority it is, then don’t you have to carry it through to every aspect of our lives?
To avoid any business that does business with Israel, you have to withdraw from the internet, social media in all its forms and effectively most forms of modern communication and engagement.
You have to withdraw from any support of countries that support Israel, and that reduces your world further still.
You have to apply the same anger and demands to any sporting team or athlete, including at the recent European Athletics and Swimming Championships and the World Sailing Championships in Dun Laoghaire. I do not recall that happening.
You probably have to withdraw from any competition or organisation in which Israel is allowed to compete or operate, not just against your own country, but in any form.
My belief is that all supra-national governing bodies should weigh up what has been happening in Gaza for nearly three years now and make a call on whether the state responsible for such atrocities should be given the right to participate in sporting and other aspects of society. To be fair to Irish Football and the FAI, we are the only country on record as having called for this at a European Football level.
Until then, though, we live in a world where we apply rules of behaviour collectively, but we, as individuals, can choose how to engage with them.
The FAI were obliged to fulfil these fixtures, but individual players were given the right to withdraw.
RTÉ were obliged to cover the games, but they had the right not to adorn them with any of the usual commentary and analysis, or indeed any advertising around them.
We as individuals could choose whether we watched the games; I chose not to, but I respect anyone else’s right to do so.
We chose not to give the game coverage and withdrew from commentary on the immediate build-up. But we respect other media’s right to cover it differently.
One point that did cause concern over the weekend was the fevered coverage of the pressure the players were under, the postponement of press conferences, and the vote the players took.
Bodies beyond media and indeed football were expressing, very publicly, their concern over the wellbeing of the players, seemingly oblivious to the fact that if the media and themselves had chosen not to give the games or the opposition the oxygen of such publicity, the pressure on the players would have been greatly reduced.
Everything that the state of Israel is inhumanly doing every day in Gaza and against the Palestinian people is wrong on every level. Over 70,000 innocent lives have been taken. We should be angry about this.
As we should be angry at the inhuman attack on a music festival that took over 1,000 lives on October 7th 2023.
But anger is a part of the human condition that rarely, if ever, produces anything positive. We should perhaps consider that.
These games will pass; Israel’s attacks on an innocent population will end through collective political will and engagement, both externally and internally. Not quickly enough, but through reason, not just anger.
