Ireland women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel before their EuroBasket 2025 qualifier in Riga.
Israel player Dor Saar said on Wednesday that the Ireland team is “quite anti-Semitic”. Basketball Ireland said the comments were “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate”.
Ireland players also lined up for their anthem beside the team’s bench rather than the centre of the court before the game, which Israel won 87-57.
But it’s the Israel players who are being “inflammatory.” I see.
Comments
26 responses to “Sporting”
I dunno, they’re not refusing a game it seems (no mention of “gas the Jews” or “from the river to the see” either). Protesting a foreign government’s policies via sport is hardly a new thing. The Israeli habit of accusing everyone of anti-Semitism at the drop of a hat isn’t cool either.
100% correct BKiSA.
I’m old enough to remember the ostracising of Apartheid South Africa from Cricket and Rugby, and the attempts to circumvent the ban by rogue teams outside national sports jurisdictions.
And I remember how gleefully Americans celebrated the boycotting of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and how the US government pressured other nations to join in the boycott, while at the same time pouring petrol on the flames of war, and ultimately enabling the Taliban’s rise to power.
When the Israeli government has made quite clear its intention to ethnically cleanse Palestine “From the River to the Sea” all Humantarians must oppose it in any way we can. And refusing to shake hands is pretty minor compared to the daily death and destruction being inflicted on innocent Palestinians. Calling it “anti-Semitic” simply shows the paucity of arguments in favour of Israeli genocide.
BKiSA, you’re right that it’s not cool. Ireland though… If they had wanted to take a principled stand that was unambiguous, they could have issued a statement prior to the event, during the event, after the event, detailing that they were protesting the Israeli governments actions, but that they fully supported the rights of civilians to be safe from attack whether that be from Terrorists or States. They didn’t. They behaved like unsporting petulant brats and opened themselves to that accusation. If they really didn’t want to play the game they could have defaulted and taken the consequences.
To be clear, I’m not a keep politics out of sport guy. As a youth I protested against the Springbok tour of NZ and tours of South Africa by NZ teams during the apartheid years. When a regime uses sport to burnish its image or to tell its population that the World supports them, well sport becomes politics and should be treated as such. But, except in very rare instances*, the choice is play or don’t play.
* For example, Ukrainian athletes are having to make this choice constantly because sporting bodies have not kicked Russian or Belorussian athletes out of competitions. Ukrainian athletes have to decide to default (some have), or compete and register their disapproval by refusing to shake hands (some have). It would be perverse for the direct victim of aggression to have to also be the one to give up their chance at competition.
I know people of Jewish heritage who are horrified by what the government of Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. This is political, it is not about race.
“Petulant brats” sounds about right, really… Still not worth getting worked up about. The endless whining by the Israelis is also getting irksome. Yes, I understand that you need to do *something* to feel safe again, but don’t cry to the rest of the world when you’re not lauded for efforts that seem at best heavy-handed.
I may be rather unusual in that point of view though…
Absolute rubbish.
The Israeli government is not attempting interested an “ethnic cleansing.” They are attempting to destroy Hamas, which actually does want to perform ethnic cleansing–“from the river to the sea.”
Hamas, which has miles of fortified tunnels some of which could serve as bomb shelters were Hamas interested in actually helping prevent civilian deaths (they’re not.) Hamas, which is not going to stop attacking Israeli civilians.
Hamas, which could end this war this moment if it released the hostages.
(And before “[Some Israeli official] said…”
While sports have been used as political statements for a long time, that doesn’t make it right, at least not in the context of targeting athletes. Kneeling during the anthem? That’s appropriate; you’re making a statement about a government symbol, which could be about protesting policies. Boycotting a game? Still not a real problem, although the athletes suffer and that can be a consideration.
Not shaking the hands of the teams, though, seems to me it is inappropriate. This is snubbing individuals who may not (probably don’t) have anything to say about government policies. If they’re like in the US, they may not understand what their government is doing, because they may not be that involved in politics. Sure, you should be, but most aren’t.
I can’t see refusing to shake hands as anything other than creepy; it might not be anti-Semitism, but it isn’t the right way to protest. It brings up images of Hitler refusing to shake Jesse Owens’ hand at the 1936 Olympics.
These athletes are not the problem. Netanyahu and the Israeli far right are the problem.
If we are using sports teams for legitimation, then that is just another indication of just how screwed up we really are. Sports are GAMES. No matter how seriously people take their sports, they aren’t statements about the politics of the country (though I realize many governments use them that way). They are GAMES; let’s lighten the hell up and enjoy them…or don’t, if you’re like me and find sports deadly dull.
Rev Davd Brindley @#2:
Funny, I was an adult in 1980, and I don’t remember anyone “gleefully celebrating” that boycott. I do remember a lot of athletes lamenting it. And say what you will about the actions of the USA, which have certainly been fairly crappy, the actions of the Soviets were 1000 times crappier. I reckon that you haven’t had family murdered by the Soviets (or the Russians before them), like I have, or you might temper that language. Russians have been murdering my family since before the USA was even a goddamned nation.
(Pardon the language, but for those of us with Estonian heritage, this is a very fucking sore point.)
I don’t remember it being gleeful. I remember it being fraught. Americans were decidedly unhappy that American athletes were going to lose their chance to compete in the Olympics. At the same time, it was like, what’s the alternative? Send them to Moscow to play games with the Russians as if Russian hadn’t just invaded Afghanistan?
Rev Davd Brindley @#2
I think you need to get your slogans right. “From the river to the sea” is paired with “Palestine will be free”. In other words, it is a slogan erasing Israel from the world.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, leaving behind a large infrasctructure of greenhouses, which were promptly destroyed. And Hamas never accepted any political participation from Fatah or the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Gay Palestinians have been thrown off rooftops in Gaza or dragged through the streets behind cars. Not surprisingly numerous Gazan gays have sought refuge in Israel (which has the only gay pride events in all of Asia, let alone the Middle East). Israel has/had women mayors, prime ministers, supreme court justices, and a plethora of women sports stars… no hijabs needed. Over the years, terrorists in Gaza have launched barrages of rockets into Israel and lofted burning balloons across the border in order to set Israeli fields and forests afire. Still, Gazans in need of work or serious medical treatment would be allowed into Israel. (Egypt keeps it border with Gaza heavily guarded because Hamas supports anti-Cairo terrorists in the Sinai peninsula.) The events of October 7, when Hamas invaded an Israeli “rave” and neighboring “kibbutzim” to commit some of the most horrific slaughter (rape, torture, beheading) of Jewish women and children (including foreign tourists and Thai field workers) since the Nazis, has not changed that policy.
Good to know that they thrashed them by 30 points.
iknklast, #7:
That is actually an invention of the American media. On August first, the opening day of the Munich Games, Hitler shook hands with German medal winners alone then left the stadium. Seeing this, the Olympic Committee president spoke with Hitler, saying that he should either greet all medal winners or none at all, and Hitler opted for the latter, not attending any medal presentations for the rest of the tournament. Owens’ medals were won on days three, four, five, and nine, so Hitler wasn’t greeting any medallists, German or otherwise, and it was this that the media spun into a snub of Owens.
However, Owens said that after winning the 100m race on day three he was passing close to Hitler’s box and Hitler acknowledged him with a wave. The day after the race, African-American newspaper editor Robert L. Vann described witnessing Hitler “salute” Owens for having won gold in the 100m sprint.
After the games, Owens himself responded to the stories of Hitler snubbing him by by saying that the only world leader to snub him was Roosevelt, who not only didn’t send Owens a congratulatory telegram as he did to America’s white medallists, he also failed to include Owens in the group of Olympians invited to a White House reception.
Ugh, really?? I didn’t know that.
@James Garnett #8
Reckon what you like, however, I married a Lithuanian, the daughter of post WW2 refugees. Her father had been conscripted to work on Soviet railways, and one of her uncles was a Lithuanian collaborator with the NAZIs. Ethnicity is no guarantee of moral purity.
@ Lady Mondegreen #6
Do you really believe that?
I don’t.
Will “releasing the hostages” release the thousands of innocents Israel holds in “administrative detention” without charge, trial, or legal representation?
Will “releasing the hostages” result in no new settlements in The West Bank?
Will “releasing the hostages” rebuild the 65% of Gaza’s buildings Israel has destroyed in the last 3 months?
Will “releasing the hostages” stop IDF soldiers from murdering children for the simple act of throwing stones?
If you think that this “war” only began on October 7th you really haven’t been keeping up, or you have swallowed the Zionist bullshit whole.
And…
German Jewish athletes were barred or prevented from taking part in the Games by a variety of methods… Jewish athletes from other countries (including, infamously, the USA) were said to have been sidelined to avoid offending the Nazi regime. Ironically, Jesse Owens might not have competed had the (Jewish) athletes (with faster recorded times) been sent to Berlin.
@ Beryl #10
https://twitter.com/CensoredMen/status/1752695597977502178
Also:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/plan-dalet-for-war-of-independence-march-1948
Note that this official Israeli government document refers to the land as Palestine, NOT Israel.
If the above is not a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, I don’t know what else to call it.
Rev Davd Brindley, why do you put ‘releasing the hostages’ in scare quotes four times in a row? Are you saying there are no hostages? They shouldn’t be released? What?
While I’ll not endorse a lot of what the good Rev says, Lady Mondegreen, the idea that Israel will end the war if/when they get what bits of the hostages are left is ridiculous. While hostage retrieval is certainly one of the professed goals of this action, ending Hamas as a going concern is the main one. At best they might get a short ceasefire. Hamas’s agency in all this stopped the minute they decided to execute their attack; what happens going forward is in Israel’s hands and I really don’t see what incentive they have to stop doing what they’re doing (but then again I don’t really see how they’re planning on achieving any of their strategic objectives).
Dear Cardinal Brindley,
Before 1948 the adjective“Palestinian” generally referred to Jews. It was the Romans that named the land “Judea Palestina”. It contained only Jews. Islam was only founded in the 7th century, which is when the Arabs first invaded the region (viz “Judea” and “Arabia”). Thirteen centuries later, after the Turkish Empire was defeated in WW1, the area was divided into French and British “mandates”. The former covered Lebanon and most of Syria, while the latter covered Israel and what became Jordan. The “Palestine Symphony Orchestra”, the “Palestine Football Club” &c (viz Wikipedia), under the British mandate, were entirely Jewish. The Arab inhabitants of the region were not “Palestinians”; they were simply “Arabs”… Here’s PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen, in an interview in Trouw, March, 1977 (via Wikipedia): “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
Well that’s just ridiculous… there clearly is a difference now. It’s like saying that American colonists were in fact always British. It isn’t an argument, it’s just trivia.
BKinSA @ #21
My cousin lives in Philadelphia. If Trump becomes the next president, can he call himself a “Pennsylvanian” and demand independence “from the river to the sea” ?
@OB #18
Not “scare quotes”. They are verbatim quotes of Lady M’s point I was addressing.
To clarify –
There are hostages.
They must be released.
Releasing the hostages will not “(quoting Lady M) “end this war”.
Beryl @ #20
The Romans renamed the province of Judea ‘Palestina’ in 135 AD, following the revolt led by Bar Kochba. At that time most of the Jewish inhabitants were sent into exile. I cannot find any source that says it was called ‘Judea Palestina’, but I am open to correction on production of evidence to the contrary.
As for the claim that ‘It contained only Jews’: there were, for a start, Roman administrators and the troops that upheld Rome’s hegemony. In the gospels we meet Pontius Pilatus, governor of Judea, who ordered Jesus’ execution (Matthew 27:2; Luke 3:1, 23:1), and the centurion who supervised Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39).
Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas, rulers in Judea in the time of Jesus, were Idumeans, also known as Edomites.
One of the anecdotes about events immediately preceding the crucifixion concerns some Greek people who approached Jesus’ disciple Philip asking for an introduction to Jesus (John 12:20). Greek settlement in Israel had begun three centuries earlier, in the time of Alexander the Great. (Philip, incidentally, is the only one of the disciples to have a Greek name.)
Nightcrow @ 24
Yes, the article that you cite puts it clearly. When I say ancient “Palestine” contained only Jews I meant its civilian population… which had settled in the land about 1000 years earlier. Of course there were Roman soldiers and administrators. There were certainly no Arabs. They only invaded in the 7th century.
Because of course Russia doesn’t mix politics and sport…
https://bsky.app/profile/euromaidanpress.bsky.social/post/3kl5nhfa4js2t
Example 56,792 showing how politics and sport are mixed when it suits people.