Tomás Ó Flatharta

The Republic of Ireland’s soccer team has been drawn against Israel in September and October 2026 in the Nations’ League tournament. The sleeveen Dublin government, run by a right-wing coalition government (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Beggar-Gombeens) [FFFGBG], is insisting the fixture must go ahead, despite rising popular opposition.

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) debated the Israel issue at a November 2025 Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) and voted by a 91 per cent majority to expel the Israeli football team from all international competitions.

Link :
FAI EGM Votes for ban on Israeli soccer team – 91 per cent majority

Bohemian FC Chief Operating Officer Daniel Lambert proposed the motion.

He said its purpose was to highlight “two serious breaches of the UEFA statutes that have taken place now for a long number of years”.

“First, and probably the most important, is that there are teams playing on occupied lands, which is explicitly prohibited by UEFA statute for very good reason.

“And the second is the absolute failure of UEFA to tackle serious instances and continued instances of racism, which has been highlighted by numerous Israeli NGOs, as well as international NGOs, so it’s not something that people are commenting on without knowledge.”

Mr Lambert said “it flies in the face of logic that one association, in a game governed by rules, can breach UEFA statutes with no measures taken against them, or with no roadmap to take any action”.

He said the motion will now be sent by the FAI to UEFA.

“We’ve asked the FAI to instruct UEFA EXCO ( executive committee) to take action against the Israeli FA under the statutes. They should be excluded from competitions, that’s what we’re hoping will happen.”

Sleeveen boss of the Dublin government Micheál Martin insists the game has to go ahead in Dublin – but retreat is on the agenda.

• A beggar-gombeen minister in the Dublin government, Marian Harkin, has broken ranks and publicly called for the Ireland-Israel game to be abandoned
• A former manager of the Irish team, Brian Kerr, is calling on the FAI “show a real bit of – if I could use a colloquialism – a real bit of balls and refuse to play Israel.” – see his full statement below
• According to the Irish Times (March 16 2026) anonymous government sources are suggesting the game should be moved out of Ireland to a “neutral” venue
• Popular Pressure Forced FIFA and UEFA to ban Russia from international competitions over Moscow’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine

Brian Kerr’s Statement

It’s undoubtedly an awkward one for the FAI, but they’ve never been exactly a beacon of ethics and principles. Even right up to Christmas this year, they were busy organising the redundancy of between 40 and 50 workers – football workers, as I call them, grassroots workers – but in the situation they’re in now with this straw, I think they could show a real bit of – if I could use a colloquialism – a real bit of balls and refuse to play Israel.

They should stand up, in my view, for the Palestinian state, the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian football organization who have not been able to play games at home for years, but have also lost huge numbers of footballers during the war that was waged on them in Gaza.

They’ve lost their football grounds. Israel has at least 6 teams playing on ground and in stadiums that were previously the land of the Palestinian state.

And there’s been no real punishment for that.

I’m talking about football. I’m talking about on football grounds. UEFA would be within their rights to penalize the Israeli Football Association and the Israeli clubs, I mean, they eventually under pressure from a lot of people, they stood up against Russia because of the war in Ukraine, belatedly, it must be said.

And this is a situation where I think if the FAI took the lead and Ireland took the lead, that other countries… I’m looking at that draw with Austria and Kosovo. Kosovo came out of the Balkans war back in 1999. Ireland refused, the government refused, to give visas, I understand it for the Yugoslavian team to come and play here in international football at that time when the war was going on. So they were prepared to make a bit of a stand. And now the Irish government say, well, we don’t want to mix politics.

I heard the minister on the radio today saying that you can’t mix sport and politics … I think that’s complete baloney and a real defense job, and I think this whole situation in Palestine and Israel has been far too serious for people to just say, ‘oh well, you must separate sport and politics, and it’s nothing to do with, for instance, Israeli Football Association.’

We saw previously with the basketball association, they wanted to try to make a stand, but the organization of European basketball put the pressure on them to play the match. The matches were played in neutral territory and all that, saves the security issues.

But I think UEFA could back the FAI if they were strong enough on it.

Link :
Former Irish international soccer manager Brian Kerr – Boycott Israeli Team

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Popular Pressure Works – The example of Russia, banned from International Soccer Competitions

FIFA and UEFA operate double standards – banning Russia from international soccer competitions but allowing Israel to compete.

The answer is : Ukraine, Palestine – Occupation Is A Crime – Ban both from international sporting competitions

An Irish Times soccer-writer, Ken Hand, makes a telling point about this. Writing in the February 16 2026 issue of the newspaper, Hand points out that direct action by member countries – Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic – forced the hand of FIFA and UEFA :

But Uefa and Fifa did not jointly decide to suspend Russia because of their shared stance against violence and aggression. They did it because they had been placed in an otherwise impossible position by the direct action of member countries.

In February 2022, the Russian national team was preparing to face Poland in the 2022 World Cup playoffs, due in March. If they beat Poland, they would face either Sweden or Czech Republic in the playoff final.

But on February 24th, Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On February 26th, the Polish and Swedish FAs announced that their teams would refuse to play against Russia. On February 27th, the Czech FA announced they too refused to play against Russia.

Only then, on February 28th, did Uefa and Fifa declare Russia’s suspension. What else could they do? Disqualify Poland, Sweden and the Czechs and hand Russia a bye to the World Cup?

Link :
Why football has boycotted Russia but not Israel – yet – Ken Early, Irish Times

Finally, the fascist-thug behaviour of Israeli football fans are grounds for banning their team from international competitions.

The precedent here is the 1980’s banning of English teams from international competitions because their travelling fans were guilty of criminal behaviour.

Alex de Jong’s report from Amsterdam (November 14 2024) tells us what to expect if Israeli soccer fans are allowed on to the streets of Dublin :

Link :

Amsterdam Riots and Wolf Who Cried Anti-Semitism – ESSF

Amsterdam Riots And Wolf Who Cried Ant-Semitism

Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv fans ignited violence in Amsterdam, but the far-right is victimising them to repress Palestine solidarity,

Amsterdam’s liberal mayor Femke Halsema declared that the clashes which followed the Maccabi Tel Aviv and AFC Ajax match at the end of last week were the result of ‘a toxic cocktail of antisemitism, hooliganism and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel’. Whilst the description is not wholly false, it is certainly misleading. This was made clear by the municipal council’s own executive report in which Halsema wrote the above statement.

Now, the Dutch right is using a distorted interpretation of the violence in the city, and weaponising antisemitism, to further its racist agenda and to justify a crackdown on Palestine solidarity.

Already, prior to the game on Thursday evening, it was clear that Maccabi supporters had come to Amsterdam looking for a fight. They trooped through the city singing racist and genocidal chants and harassing people they assumed to be Muslim or Arab. Furthermore, given Amsterdam is generally a left-leaning city with a substantial Muslim community, it is not uncommon to see Palestinian flags hanging from balconies or in windows. Videos circulated showing Maccabi fans went around tearing them down.

Things further escalated when Tel Aviv team’s fans assaulted a taxi-driver, provoking a response from a closely knit and quickly mobilised group.

Tensions had run so high before the match, that the Amsterdam municipal council executive even considered banning it. However, they decided against this out of fear that the hundreds of Maccabi fans in the city would become even more uncontrollable. Instead, the executive tried to reach out to football clubs to ask their supporters to calm down. The Israeli ambassador was also asked to make a statement that football and politics should not mix, but whether he responded to this has not been made public.

 Double standards

This entire situation was the result of blatant hypocrisy on the part of Dutch authorities when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian teams were banned, yet when similar requests were made by Palestine solidarity organisations to ban Israeli teams, they were ignored. The Amsterdam executive even claimed that Maccabi fans, who in Greece had hospitalised a man for wearing a Palestine scarf, were not known to be dangerous.

When the match in Amsterdam finally started, Maccabi fans loudly disrupted the minute silence for the victims of the flooding in Spain. This is perhaps no surprise as the Spanish government is one of the more outspoken European states when it comes to being critical of Israel’s war.

After the match, houses with Palestinian flags were again beleaguered by groups of Maccabi fans.

Things escalated that night as groups of local youth got into fights with the Maccabi fans, seeking them out across the city. 62 people were arrested, ten of them were Israeli. After a day in which the police mostly took a hands-off approach to the Maccabi supporters, arrests disproportionately targeted local youth instead. The Jewish anti-Zionist group Erev Rav released a statement criticising the police force for targeting local young people of Moroccan background while ’Maccabi fans who initiated provocations faced no consequences’.

Erev Rav had initially planned to commemorate the 1938 pogrom in Germany last weekend, but cancelled their event. They explained that they had little trust in the Amsterdam police keeping anti-zionist Jews safe from the Maccabi supporters.

The group also denounced the instrumentalizing of Jewish identity by Maccabi supporters.

 Political opportunism

The Dutch far-right unsurprisingly saw an opportunity in all of this. After the match, Geert Wilders, leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, declared that what had happened was a ’pogrom of the worse kind’ and called for Halsema to be sacked. He claimed that she had supposedly failed to protect Jews against antisemitic violence. It is undeniable that some people involved in the clashes threw around antisemitic insults and it was said that people who ’looked Jewish’ were ordered to show their passports, all of which must absolutely be condemned, but to call this a pogrom is totally disproportionate.

In reality, the right is instrumentalizing the issue of antisemitism by equating all Jews with the state of Israel – the same tactic often used by the Israeli government that cynically deploys it against its critics. Wilders knows well that antisemitic statements are unfortunately not unknown in Dutch football, but he seems to pick and choose when to speak out against it. For example, a particularly infamous chant that is often hurled at Amsterdam team Ajax, calls for the gassing of all Jews. But because this form of antisemitism comes from mostly white football supporters, there has been far less interest from the Dutch right which puts its energy towards linking antisemitism to Islam and migrants.

Wilders is also not the only culprit. Upon returning from visiting far-right Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, Dutch PM Dick Schoof declared that antisemitism results from ’a failure to integrate’ into Dutch society. For him, the problem is migrants, not the racist and fascist far-right rhetoric being peddled across Europe.

 Where are left-wing politicians?

In the aftermath of the match the situation grew more tense. On Monday people clashed again with the police. This came after the executive had banned all demonstrations and a protest on Sunday had been dispersed. Between Sunday and Wednesday, scores of protesters were detained during heavy handed dispersals of demonstrations by the police. Activists had called a rally in defence of democratic rights and in solidarity with Palestine.

Despite all of this repression, the parliamentary left has been mostly absent. Though this comes as no surprise. There have been significant Palestine solidarity efforts in the Netherlands from demonstrations to sit ins, yet left-wing parties – with the exception of the small radical party BIJ1 – have hardly been involved. Worse still, large parts of the Dutch Labour Party have also historically been strongly pro-Israel.

The silence of the parliamentary left is making it easier for the right to whip up a climate of hatred against migrants, to link antisemitism with Islam, and to label Palestine solidarity as hostility to Jews.

Green party Mayor Halsema has only added fuel to the fire in her insistence on comparing the events over the recent days with pogroms. Her imposition of the ban on protests in Amsterdam is also clearly an attempt to avoid further criticism from the right, but this has only legitimised an authoritarian crack down on Palestine solidarity in particular.

The longer term consequences of the recent events remain to be seen, but the general trajectory is clear. Aided by the silence and opportunism of the centre-left, the far-right has been the main beneficiary.

A moral panic has taken hold in the country, and once again, Muslim youth, especially those of Moroccan descent, have been declared an existential threat to Dutch society. This time, it’s over their supposed innate antisemitism. As Right-wing parties float the idea of stripping them of Dutch nationality (at least for those who hold a dual nationality), as a punitive measure, the hooliganism by Maccabi supporters and their glorification of Israel’s genocide has fallen to the wayside.

In the coming weeks and months attempts to criminalise Palestine solidarity will likely to grow, and supporting Palestine liberation will be increasingly synonymous with antisemitism. Already just last month, a spokesperson from the Palestine solidarity organisation Samidoun was banned from the country and the Dutch cabinet has asked for the organisation to be entirely banned.

The only way to resist the right’s authoritarian policies and racism, is for the left and solidarity activists to stick together, tell the whole story of what happened in Amsterdam and defend the rights to organise and speak out in solidarity with Palestine.

Alex De Jong

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Link :
Amsterdam Riots And Wolf Who Cried Ant-Semitism – New Arab

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The Amsterdam Israeli football fan riots were not isolated incidents. A November 6 2025 match in Birmingham (England) between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv was played under “unusual circumstances” due to the infamous racist behaviour of israeli football thugs.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned, following police assessments.