This 👇
A perfect letter published in Irish Times today:
Ireland, Israel and boycotts
Sir,
– I am disturbed by the furore about Ireland’s forthcoming Uefa Nations League fixtures
against Israel on September 27th and October 4th. Anti-Israel sentiment seems to me uniquely
obsessive in this country, amplified in media and public discourse to a greater extent than
elsewhere outside Israel’s traditional enemies.
Particularly disturbing is the inconsistency of outrage. Last week 28,981 people attended
Ireland v Qatar at the Aviva Stadium. Qatar shelters and finances the leaders of the Hamas
terrorist group, which waged a sickening attack on Israel, and the worst pogrom on Jews since
the Holocaust, on October 7th, 2023 .
In 2021 the Guardian newspaper concluded that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India,
Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar on construction sites for the
2022 soccer World Cup. Yet there was no protest against Qatar in the Aviva.
Nor are there signs of opposition to the Ireland cricket team’s planned five one-day
internationals against Afghanistan in August, despite the appalling human rights violations of
the ruling Taliban. Women and girls are being systematically erased from public life, education
and healthcare in Afghanistan.
We saw no protests outside the Iranian Embassy in January and February when, according to
international media, about 30,000 civilians were murdered in just three days after protests
against the brutal regime.
Iran sponsors Hizbullah, whose terrorists murdered Pte Seán Rooney in Lebanon in 2022. Iran
and Hizbullah propped up the Al-Assad regime in Syria during the civil war of 2011 to 2024 in
which nearly 600,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed.
I was shocked to see the new Iranian Ambassador being welcomed by President Catherine
Connolly at Áras an Uachtaráin last month.
The civilian death toll in Gaza is a tragedy, and informed criticism of Israel is valid, yet I have
heard few voices criticising Hamas for using innocent Gazans as human shields, refusing them
shelter in their underground tunnels, and operating militarily in schools and hospitals.
What message is Ireland sending to the wider world? That we shrug off the brutalities of
Hamas, Hizbullah, Qatar and Iran while obsessing about Israel, the world’s only Jewish state
and home to half the world’s remaining 16 million Jews, who make up just 0.2 per cent of the
global population?
The continued focus on the forthcoming matches, not least in the Dáil which surely has more
urgent issues to grapple with, feels unbalanced and frankly somewhat unhinged.
Irish people can claim all we might that anti-Semitism and Israelophobia are not the significant
problems I believe them to be in our country, but we should not be surprised if much of the rest
of the world begs to differ.
– Yours, etc,
DR PETER BOYLAN,Ranelagh,