Ireland Basketball Team Not Shaking Hands With Israel Team Does Nothing to Quell Antisemitism Accusations
It’s a shame that Team Ireland couldn’t accept the truth about their country.
Ireland’s women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel’s women’s basketball team at their EuroBasket 2025 qualifier game.
Losers on & off the court!
In a despicable display of unsportsmanlike conduct, the women's Irish 🏀 team declined to shake hands with the Israeli team or join them at center court for the national anthems before their game tonight.
Oh, and the final score: 87🇮🇱 – 57🇮🇪 pic.twitter.com/fXfTwUt0e3
— Yaki Lopez 🎗️🇮🇱 (@YakiLopez) February 8, 2024
Israeli player Dor Saar said in an interview on Tuesday, “It’s known that they are quite anti-Semitic, and it’s no secret; maybe that’s why a strong game is expected.”
Team Ireland chose not to shake Israeli hands.
No one should be shocked by Saar’s comments. No one should be shocked by Ireland’s behavior, but not for the reason most people think.
Is Saar wrong? Maybe about the players, but definitely not about Ireland.
Weeks before the game, Team Ireland tried to escape it, claiming “safety” reasons.
Five players chose not to play. Coach James Weldon didn’t disclose which players “made it a personal choice” not to play Israel.
Even the author of The Irish Times piece made some comments that would raise eyebrows:
The other side of the story, of course, is that Israel is using the game as propaganda. Members of the Israeli Defence Force have visited with Ireland’s opponents in the build-up to the game and photos of soldiers standing on the hardcourt in fatigues with assault weapons strapped to them have been circulated widely. This is not the biggest fixture in world sport, but it’s not a small thing either.
They’re at WAR, dude. They’re showing support for Israeli teams because places the war pushed Ireland’s antisemitism through the seams so the whole world could see it.
Yes. Ireland is one of the most antisemitic nations we’ve seen since Hamas invaded and massacred thousands of Israelis.
An op-ed in The Irish Times published in January: The anti-Semitism I face, both blatant and casual, is almost exclusively Irish
Oliver Sears, the son of a Holocaust survivor, could not believe the Irish representative at the European Jewish Association Leaders Forum to Fight anti-Semitism and Racism lied about how Jews are loved in Ireland. The representative even said there has been very little antisemitism in the country.
“The anti-Semitism I face, both blatant and casual, is not new and is almost exclusively Irish,” wrote Sears.
Sears also stressed what we already knew: “These are attacks against Jews, not Israelis.”
Unfortunately, the hate Ireland has towards Israel started decades ago. Yes. Decades:
Ireland and Israel did not establish full diplomatic relations until 1975 and there was no Israeli Embassy in Dublin until 1993, with Ireland’s embassy in Tel Aviv opening three years later. The two countries have frequently had a difficult relationship over the past 50 years.
Ireland was, for instance, the first EEC state (as the EU was then called) to back Palestinian statehood in 1980. “Since then, every Irish Government has given a high priority to the achievement of a ‘two state solution,’” the country’s Foreign Ministry proudly declares.
Here are a few more recent examples:
-
- From Jerusalem Post in October 2021: Comprehensive report exposes antisemitism in Ireland
- From Jerusalem Post in July 2023: Anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland almost indivisible from antisemitism – ex-minister
- From Foreign Policy in June 2010: Why the Irish Support Palestine
- From Haaretz in July 2018: Irish Senate Approves Bill Boycotting Israeli Settlement Goods
</ul
Israel had at least one voice in the Irish government: minister of European affairs and deputy foreign minister Lucinda Creighton.
In 2021, Creighton, now CEO of Vulcan Consulting and senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project, explained the media did not give people the facts. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Creighton said: “There is very little independent, impartial reporting documenting what is happening in Israel, which feeds into a lack of fact-based knowledge, and I think that allows these narratives to kind of take off and be propagated, and that has been the case in Ireland.”
Creighton explained that no one tells the Irish “about how Hamas’s objective is the obliteration of the Israeli state.” The media is only critical of Israel while sympathetic towards the Palestinians. She said those views from the media are “conflated with broad antisemitic views with very little counter-narrative.”
Therefore, it’s hard “to extract antisemitism from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment.”
The Times of Israel also detailed the history of anti-Israel sentiments in Ireland. The publication claimed it’s about to get worse with Sinn Féin on the rise:
“If there’s any nation that can understand the difficulties that the Palestinians are living under now it’s the Irish,” Pat Sheehan, a Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (the province’s devolved parliament), told AFP in late October. “Ireland has suffered colonialism and occupation for 800 years, there have been many armed uprisings against British rule, and we see Palestinians suffering under similar colonial occupation.”
Creighton used a Sinn Féin member as an example in the 2021 article I noted above:
Creighton gave the example of a lawmaker from Sinn Fein named Martin Browne who said that Israel created ISIS and called for the destruction of Israeli Zionists. One of his colleagues in Sinn Fein, Reada Cronin, tweeted that Hitler was a pawn of the Rothschilds, that Israeli embassy staff are akin to monkeys, and that former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has made antisemitic statements in the past, was targeted by the Mossad. She apologized for the tweets in 2020, but said they had been “glib” and “off the cuff.”
“She apologized for the manner, as opposed to the substance, and didn’t acknowledge it was antisemitic,” Creighton said. “When these statements are made by elected officials, the substance is not really challenged, and that is a problem. That kind of comment is normalized.”
Where is the lie? Sinn Féin posted this video on its YouTube page:
Ireland has no problem showing off its antisemitism.
Remember. It’s not about Palestine. It’s not about Israel.
It’s always been about Jews.
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Comments
Eurabia now front and center.
London has muzzie mayor. Dublin next?
They have Indian leader, don’t know if he’s muzzie
He grew up Catholic, and now has no religion.
Wow, I did not know that Ireland was anti-Semitic, what losers. Is that a good reason to reject potential immigrants?
James Joyce’s Ulysses depicts the casual antisemitism in the Ireland of its day. It appeared in serialization some 30 years before there was a State of Israel & well before most Jews had become Zionists.
Two jokes I read recently about the game:
1. At halftime the Irish team was getting beat so badly they asked for a ceasefire.
2. The Irish team thought the final score,87-57,was disproportionate.
I can relay the above because I’m a quarter Irish.
lol welcome to 1/4 ‘s…
They’re demanding “equity.”
The Irish government and many Irish citizens have been indulging in utterly despicable and indefensible dhimmitude, Jew-hate and anti-Israel venom for some time, now. It’s infuriating and galling to witness. These are people who should know better and who should be smart enough to not gullibly swallow Muslim supremacist/terrorist/Islamofascist propaganda, yet, they persist in sympathizing with goose-stepping Muslim thugs.
Also, how stupid and ignorant does a non-Muslim American or European have to be, to gullibly swallow this vile ” ‘Resistance’ isn’t terrorism” propaganda line that Muslim supremacists/terrorists/Islamofascists have contrived and that holds seductive sway with European dhimmis and American Dhimmi-crats?
Muslims have been engaging in “resistance” against Jews, Christians, Hindus and other non-Muslims for over 1,400 years — ever since their intrinsically and immutably supremacist, totalitarian, belligerent, hate-filled and pathology-laden ideology of “Submission” was founded.
Claiming that Muslim terrorism/jihad is an allegedly legitimate response to transparently fallacious and contrived Muslim grievances and absurd Muslim claims to victimhood, is contemptible.
Its the tik tok generation. Memes and 30 second vids define their reality.
30 seconds is the operation lifetime for their thoughts.
Ireland has lost its soul More due to the rotting corruption of abortion than TikTok, like in this country. Soros helped a bit there too.
I think you have it backwards. Abortion is the symptom, not the cause. And Soros came along much later. He hasn’t helped, but he didn’t cause it.
And the antisemitism in Ireland is ancient. I’m afraid the RC church is responsible for that. Its history is steeped in antisemitism, and it inculcated this illness deep in Irish society. It has since repented and renounced its sin, but the Irish are no longer religious; they’re very catholic in a cultural sense, but they no longer believe in the religion or accept the church’s authority to tell them anything. The antisemitism is deep in the culture, and the church telling them that it’s a sin doesn’t impress them because they’ve stopped listening to the church.
There’s a low-grade genocide being committed in South Africa against white farmers. Imagine if this were a visiting South African women’s basketball team the Irish girls were refusing to greet in a sportsman-like manner and how the media would treat it.
Perhaps America would benefit from inviting those farmers to come here?
What?!? Offer admission to WHITES? People who are likely to be self-sustaining, law abiding, productive members of society? Those who likely have English as at least their second language and are likely fluent?
It will never happen.
I’m 1/4 Irish, I’m surprised by this Irish insanity, but I have a colleague who told me 10 years ago, the cities are full of Muslims, it’s Irish no more
I think unfortunately, they have been thinking this for sometime however.
Shame, shame, shame Ireland.
Remember though, they fought against the English for 400+ years to make Ireland African.
I wish I could express surprise, but that would be a lie.
Sinn Fein can also relate to being a political front for a terrorist organization. Losers.
https://gript.ie/
For Irish news. Editor John McGuirk is not antisemitic.
All the hearty, good Irish hit the shores in the late 1600s and turned the southeastern portion of North America into a prosperous land that sparked two major conflicts over valuable assets, fiber and tobacco.
The potato famine crowd brought in low IQ.
Don’t forget about the whiskey!
Irish and Scots
Low IQ due to genetics or due to famine induced brain damage?
Well the Israeli team gave them a lesson is sportsmanship, pride, and basketball by beating those pathetic haters quite handedly. If you are going to stand on hate dressed up as politics for your platform then you should at least back it up on the court.
Wonderful!
Now they will hate more.
If you’ve got no game all you have is your hate , that won’t win a championship or any respect. Guess the luck of the Irish did t work out
Nice of the Irish to remind us that even those Irish who are not racist bigots still tolerate all the racist bigots around them. To be expected from the country that “invented” modern terrorism.
This might be a case where both sides are wrong.
Members of the IDF showing up at closed practices with rifles attached sends a horrible message.
Not shaking hands at a closed sporting event where there is no one in the stands sends a bad message as well as sports are one thing that should bring people together.
If you are going to complain about members of a basketball team not shaking hands, then don’t show up with guns. If you are going to complain about the guns, then show they aren’t necessary and shake the other team’s hands.
Even the Israeli coach seems to have had issues with the hypocrisy from both sides:
You simply cannot show up with guns and say “show us a peaceful gesture” and on the other side say “guns don’t matter …. this is not a political matter” and then not shake hands.
There were no adults in the room. Only children.
No! They knew of the antisemitism in Ireland and they had to be concerned about the young ladies safety. The fact that there were no spectators kind of says it all.
People could easily get into the gym and shoot the Israel girls. They are sending a message, loud and clear
Never again!
So you think that the Irish women’s team was going to attack the Israeli women?
Is that really your point?
If people could have gotten into the gym, you guard the access points and not stand around with the team doing nothing.
The only message “they” are sending is that the two nations can’t even come together for a stupid basketball game at a neutral site and in a neutral country.
Shame on them.
Shame on you for adding to the hatred and the childishness.
Yes it’s happened to Israelis in international sport many times , Munich Olympics ring a bell ? Ireland is know for its anti semitism , just follow its warm fuzzy relations with the PLO.
The Israeli coach wants her players to be focused on basketball. That’s not surprising. She’s also just trying to be diplomatic in the sport, but it sends a bad message to fans (if they have them).
People are capable of more than one thing in their lives and Israeli pride is all the more important when your country has recently been attacked by terrorists.
No one showed up with guns to an actual game. They showed up when invited and they were in uniform which includes their weapons. They didn’t pose with guns for photo ops. This is just self-indulgent Irish pouting.
He, I assume. Sharon is a boy’s name. Though I suppose nowadays one mustn’t assume.
Yeah because things worked out so well at the Munich Olympics when they weren’t allowed to use their own security. What could possibly go wrong?
Why? What bad message does it send? National pride?! That Jews are proud to defend themselves and are proud of their honorable military forces?! If the coach is uncomfortable with the military then he is a cad and a traitor, like the anthem-kneelers in the USA, or like the hoplophobes who have banished guns from US schools.
It appears Ireland should’ve spent more effort practising for this game rather than rehearsing their worthless virtue signal.
I think Ireland is in trouble:
Zechariah 2:8 For thus says the Yahweh of hosts: “He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.
Counter: read Ezekiel.
Irish history is definitely not Palestinian history.
For one thing, Irish aren’t continuously trying to kill Brits and have joined the modern world. In fact, they now share a government…imagine that. The same cannot be said for much of the middle East.
They share a government?!
As an American of Irish ancestry I am very disappointed in Ireland.
Ireland is romanticized in America. Actually most Irish-American organizations raised money for the IRA. And we forget that Ireland’s hatred of England lead it to support Nazi Germany in WWII. They seem to think of themselves as the ultimate victims, and maybe resent the Jews for having suffered through the Holocaust. In any case, support for Hitler in the last great war naturally leads to hatred of Jews today. The Irish have centered far too much of their identity around hatred.
No surprise. The Irish are extreme racists so adding a little anti semetic content seems in order. Wait till Sinn Fein decides enough is enough with the Muslims taking over the country and the government sold them out.
Europe is just now realizing importing millions of people that hate them was not a good idea. Top it off with the green nonsense destroying everyone’s way of life and it’s about to get very interesting for those EU Elites
It looks to me like it is here that the msm is totally one-sided and that’s all the Irish people see and hear. Basically, we get the same drumbeat about Israel and the “Freedom Fighters” of Hamas. With no FNC or NewsMax to at least offer a counterargument, what can we expect?
My wife has extensive family throughout Ireland
. From the cities, to country farms, small villages, even secluded fishing villages on off shore islands. They run the gamut from college professors, legal and medical professionals, shop keepers, farmers and fishermen. We’ve traveled extensively throughout the Republic. They are on the surface kindly and well meaning, but our experience is that they are unquestioning, easy led and manipulated and docile. They appear to go along with every lefty idea that’s fed to them while their entire culture is being colonized by savages, their laws are being changed to make criticism of what is happening illegal. The #1 boys name in Galway is Muhammad. Let that sink in. Every home we visited had both Obamas books on the shelves. There isn’t any meaningful conservative push back that we saw. The ones that do are vilified as racist. We are always kind of surprised at how absolutely different, under the surface, the thinking is over there. Here there’s always a little bit of F-you under the surface, not just buying what they’re selling. It may be because we’re born into liberty, maybe because much of the hard nose risk takers emigrated. Another issue is electing leaders with no posterity. When you’re a genetic dead end you don’t really care about what happens when your gone. Connor Macgregor has made noise about running for president to save Ireland. I hope he does.
I think also that the connection between Soviet support of the IRA and KGB inventing the PLO and the idea of “palestinian” state hood cannot be discounted when looking at their anti semitism
Who acts like a sore loser BEFORE losing by 30?