If the Republic of Ireland team plays Israel, it “will be a stain on Irish soccer”, the D\u00e1il has heard.<\/p>\n
Ireland was drawn against Kosovo, Israel and Austria in Group B3 in the upcoming UEFA Nations League.<\/p>\n
The two games between Ireland and Israel are to take place next September and October.<\/p>\n
The away fixture will take place on 27 September, while the return leg in Dublin is scheduled for 4 October.<\/p>\n
The FAI said it intends to fulfil the fixtures.<\/p>\n
Last year, the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA to ban Israel from European competitions.<\/p>\n
Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Ruth Coppinger in the D\u00e1il called for a popular boycott of the upcoming game, saying this could lead to “a domino effect”.<\/p>\n
“It’s an inconsequential tournament – it’s not the World Cup play-offs or anything like that,” she said during Leaders’ Questions.<\/p>\n
T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris responded that her comment was “a bit sneery” as the tournament may not be inconsequential to the players.<\/p>\n
Ms Coppinger asked if he agreed that “there is a time to take a stand in sport, and that the Ireland versus Israel soccer fixture is exactly that time”.<\/p>\n
She claimed that racism is normalised in Israeli sport.<\/p>\n
“We should not be complicit in normalising a team that’s integrally connected to a genocide, to racism against Palestinians and to the oppression of the Palestinian people,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Coppinger said that “Ireland has been in this situation before” in relation to apartheid, and made a positive reference to former taoiseach Charles Haughey’s handling of the issue.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris rejected Ms Coppinger’s assertions and said Ireland continues “to work for a two-state solution”.<\/p>\n
He said when it comes to sport a logical assessment is needed, and in this case the FAI made a determination, and UEFA then “decided not to take that view on board”.<\/p>\n
“The tournament is going ahead,” he added, warning that if Ireland pulls out it could harm Irish soccer.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris also criticised the targeting of individual players in an attempt to pressure them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Republic of Ireland team plays Israel, it “will be a stain on Irish soccer”, the D\u00e1il…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-306464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}