Ireland women's basketball team refuse to shake hands with Israel
Ireland women's basketball team refuse to shake hands with Israel
Ireland women's basketball team refuse 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".
Well I never...
Imagine being an Israeli Jew and not know what those two words mean... It's like someone thinking everyone in America is white, and that white and American mean the same thing.
Good.
They were called anti-Semitic because they wouldn't shake hands, or they wouldn't shake hands because they were called anti-Semitic? The article isn't terribly clear on the order of events here.
"It’s known that they are quite antisemitic and it’s no secret, and maybe that’s why a strong game is expected"
That's the full quote from the israeli player from before the game.
Another article about this that makes it clearer.
- Ireland team wanted to boycott game due to Israel's actions
- Israeli player called Ireland antisemitic
- Ireland team refused to shake hands. Possibly would have happened also without #2
To be fair, being called anti-semitic by a bunch of hate filled genocidal Nazis isn't really the worst thing in the world. It's kind of like Samuel Little calling somebody a misogynistic bully.
To be even more fair, it's culture washing as the Palestinians are a semitic people, and the Israeli player called the Irish players anti-Semitic because of their well known support of the Palestinian people.
There was a controversy over would they boycott the game or not.
The guy who manages women's basketball in the coutnry said a boycott would get us fined €180,000, make us basketball pariahs, and accomplish nothing. I don't particularly take a side on that but I put on the game for a minute and we were getting thumped.
I want to high five each one of these ladies.
It's too bad they're such anti-semites. /s
Fuck Israel.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ireland women's basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel before their EuroBasket 2025 qualifier in Riga.
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.
The match, which was moved to Riga because of the ongoing war in Gaza, went ahead despite Basketball Ireland facing pressure to boycott the fixture.
Basketball Ireland's statement prior to the start of the game read: "Basketball Ireland informed Fiba Europe yesterday that as a direct result of recent comments made by Israeli players and coaching staff - including inflammatory and wholly inaccurate accusations of anti-Semitism, published on official Israeli Federation channels - that our players will not be partaking in traditional pre-match arrangements with our upcoming opponents.
"This includes exchanging of gifts, formal handshakes before or after the game, while our players will line up for the Irish national anthem by our bench rather than centre court.
"In an interview on the Israeli Basketball Association's website, United States-based student Saar said: "It's known that they are quite anti-semitic and it's no secret, and maybe that's why a strong game is expected.
The original article contains 420 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I’m all for protesting the government and their actions. But I am a bit torn on this.
It’s like being a US tourist while Trump is in office and being denied everything because you are associated with you government.
I hate it too. But I am not my government.
They refused to shake hands because one of the israeli players called them all antisemites in the pre game interviews.
Ireland has a long history of supporting the palestinian cause - consistently the highest in europe - which is what the player was intentionally mischaracterising as antisemitism.
National sports teams represent their countries.
Sports boycotts are a useful way of alerting a country's citizens that we are upset by the actions of the government they have chosen to represent them.
The Israel players spent time taking photos with IOF soldiers.
Maybe it is wrong to assume complicity of individuals in their governments actions, maybe it isn't, but you don't need to make any assumptions here.
These people are choosing to represent their country, not just going about their private business.
It might suck, but yeah we kinda deserved to be excluded from the world stage for allowing trump to be president. Anyone that is willing to represent Israel/Russia/Saudi Arabia right now is kinda a piece of shit.
This implies that it is the people's fault that Trump was elected, when it's the result of a larger systemic issue.
You don't go around calling people out for it though. You agree with them that Trump is a jerk and that you didn't want him to become a president. This is different. The Israeli team called the Irish team antisemitic because they don't like what Israel is doing. The truth though is that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the genocide that Israel is inflicting on Palestine
It's one way to push governments to change, especially in a representative democracy. It's why businesses are pulling their operations from Russia (and to a much lesser extent Israel).
Edit: Typo.
Both Israel and the US have representative democracies. Views of the government are the views of the people.
Jfc what an out of touch and wilfully ignorant comment.. 🤦♀️
Never mind that Netanyahu has spent the past decade or so actively and successfully eroding whatever pretence of democracy existed in Israel before..
But with just some VERY MINOR tweaks to the system, the "views of the people" would be very different. In the US, the system is OPENLY engineered to preserve existing power structures, in ways that have accumulated over the decades (Jerrymandering, Electoral College and First Past The Post all add up...)