A lot has already been written about the despicable behavior of the Irish football team before, during, and after last night’s Nations League match against the Israeli team – in protest against Israel’s non-existent genocide against palestinian Arabs in Gaza.
This behavior included: Irish team members wearing black armbands for “all lives lost” in the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza; bowing their heads during the playing of Israel’s anthem Hatikva; refusing to shake hands or exchange pennants with the Israeli players; and the Irish captain approaching the center of the field for the pre-match talk with his hands firmly clasped behind his back to avoid shaking the hand of Israel’s captain Manor Solomon.
Solomon also insinuated that the Irish players were saying some nasty things during the game (while clapping back in style):
Israel 🇮🇱 national team captain, Manor Solomon, on the match this evening against Ireland 🇮🇪 pic.twitter.com/zLVzg1bQFY
— Karen Ievers 🇮🇪🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@karenievers) September 27, 2026
He’s got form.
There are a number of things that make the Irish team’s behavior even more reprehensible (if that is possible).
Firstly, it is not like they are consistently standing up in this way where they are facing teams from countries with actual, shocking human rights records.
Earlier this year they played a friendly football match against Qatar, a country whose stellar human rights record includes:
- Migrant workers subjected to unpaid wages, confiscated passports, high recruitment fees, illegal “Azad” visas and criminalization of “absconding,” with abuses largely going unpunished
- Thousands of migrant worker deaths from unexplained causes
- Laws that limit women’s rights in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance
- Male guardians able to report women as “absent” from home, potentially leading to arrest and forced return or administrative detention
- Criminal penalties for criticizing the emir, insulting the flag, blasphemy and inciting regime overthrow
- Discrimination against, and criminalization of, LGBTQ+ people
- As many as 14 Baha’is deported between 2003 and 2025, apparently for their faith, plus a five-year sentence for a Baha’i dignitary in 2025
- Members of the Ghufran clan stripped of citizenship since 1996, leaving some stateless
And last year they had no issue competing against in a cricket series against Afghanistan – a country whose stellar human rights record includes:
- Girls barred from education beyond sixth grade, making Afghanistan the only country in the world with such a ban, along with bans on women’s post-primary education and restrictions on their employment
- New laws further restricting women’s freedom of movement and access to public spaces, described by UN experts as “gender apartheid”
- ICC arrest warrants, issued in July 2025, for senior Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender persecution
- A 2026 criminal procedure code that counts only “excessive” beating as domestic violence against women, and a decree on judicial separation of spouses that removes minimum-age protections for girls’ marriage
- Broad censorship, with journalists and activists arbitrarily detained and tortured
- Arbitrary arrests, torture and public executions, with Taliban courts imposing flogging, stoning and other cruel punishments
- Extrajudicial killings of media workers, human rights defenders and former government affiliates
- A January 2026 code that defines Muslims only as Hanafi adherents and labels other groups, including Shia Muslims, as heretics, alongside documented persecution of Hazaras
- No rights or liberties at all for LGBTQ+ people
- A suspended constitution, and a dismantled Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission
- A Freedom House score of 6 out of 100
As you will see from the below video, not only did the Irish compete with these countries, they treated the players with the utmost respect.
If you want to understand what hypocrites the Irish are, compare how they treated the Israeli football team with how they have recently treated teams from a couple of ACTUAL human rights-abusing countries: Qatar and Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/zBa7Aut9g7
— David Lange (@Israellycool) September 28, 2026
And there’s more.
One of the Irish players, Finn Azaz, is actually half-Israeli, and he reportedly made an ‘impassioned’ speech to get across the Israeli point of view during the debate about whether this game should go ahead (he was left out of the starting XI and remained an unused substitute).
So let’s get this straight.
The Irish players were prepared to treat their Israeli opponents with a level of contempt they apparently could not muster for representatives of Qatar or Afghanistan.
And they did so knowing that sitting right there among them was Finn Azaz – their own teammate, the son of an Israeli mother, who had reportedly spoken passionately during their internal discussions and who, according to their own manager, was in “a different position” from the rest of the squad.
Ireland is widely regarded as one of the most antisemitic countries in the world, let alone in Europe. This latest behavior does nothing to dispel this notion.
