How did Ireland get here? As Ireland’s footballers huddle in a Hungarian hotel deciding whether to play Israel tonight, it is worth asking who put them there.
The quiet city of Debrecen in eastern Hungary has become the centre of the footballing world. Outside the team hotel, the world’s press is camped, cameras trained on the doors. Inside, Ireland’s team is locked in a meeting with FAI officials, deciding whether to play a match against Israel in the UEFA Nations League. Nobody outside quite knew what was going on. Training was called off with barely a moment’s notice. The pre-match press conference, a UEFA obligation, was postponed by WhatsApp message. Then came the reports: the team was split. Gavin Bazunu and four others did not want to play. The rest of the squad wanted to get on with it. Kick-off is tonight. Spare a thought for the players: they are footballers, not diplomats, and they did not put themselves in this position. Others did. The same hate that came for Ed Sheeran came for them.
I look at my beloved country and wonder: how did we get here?
In the Ireland of 2026, even a Nations League fixture has become a loyalty test and anyone who fails it can expect a megaphone in the ear. Quite literally.
Earlier this week, hardline activists from Northern Ireland descended on the Castleknock Hotel, where the players were staying. Armed with megaphones, they demanded that ordinary guests, people who had simply booked a room, pressure the team into cancelling the match. Those who remained outside, faces twisted with animus towards Israel, kept at it until a large contingent of Gardaí threatened to arrest the lot of them. It was brutal and ugly and crossed the line of peaceful protest. The campaign to cancel the match has been led by Irish Sport for Palestine. These are the same geniuses who thought stripping the name ‘Herzog Park’, a tiny park in the middle of a Jewish community, and renaming it ‘Free Palestine Park’ was a jolly good idea. Subtlety is not their strong suit.
Nor is it the strong suit of Irish football. Heimir Hallgrímsson, the coach, thought it a good idea to seek an exemption, much as Kosovo and Serbia are kept apart. UEFA sent him packing: Ireland is not at war with Israel, however much some would pretend otherwise. The reaction from the Israeli FA was swift and savage: it accused him of ‘stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy.’ Hallgrímsson needs to put his big-boy pants on, do the job he’s paid to do and bring back six points for Ireland.
Meanwhile, RTÉ, the national broadcaster, has confirmed that there will be no RTÉ commentator. Commentary will be taken from the international feed as part of stripped-back coverage. Clearly, some staff have decided their conscience outweighs their contractual obligations. Which raises the question: who is running RTÉ? Is it Kevin Bakhurst, formerly of Ofcom, and the board, or the increasingly militant unions? Mr Bakhurst is turning into a very thin-skinned chap. His response to social media users who posed this question was to block them.
Let me be clear: no one could look at the images of innocent Palestinians, particularly the children, and not be deeply moved. Everyone has the right to peaceful protest and to criticise Israel all day long. These two things can be true at the same time.
But strip it back and you can see what lies at the heart of these protests. It is the desire to dismantle the state of Israel. Hounding footballers in their hotel is not about peace in the Middle East and it will not move the dial one fraction in Tel Aviv. It is about making the existence of one country, and one people, unmentionable in Irish society, so we can say we stood on the ‘right side of history.’
A spokesman for one of Ireland’s biggest trade unions revealed the mindset of the anti-Israel crowd when he said ‘silence is complicity.’ So it’s not enough to internalise our support for Palestine; we must externalise it, and if not, we are baby killers.
The commentator Laura Perrins has conducted a study of four national media outlets, including RTÉ, from January to May, which found that 3,007 news items were devoted to Palestine. That is roughly twenty per day, before you count the talk shows. Opinion polls consistently show 3 per cent of Irish voters consider Gaza a priority, roughly the same share of the radical Left pushing this agenda. Yet somehow this tiny minority is afforded a bigger national platform than the government.
There is no escape. Decent Irish people, who want to get on with their lives, are sick of it. As a non-Jewish Irish woman, I look at my beloved country and wonder: how did we get here?
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