Playing Israel in football is unthinkable right now

Ten years have passed since football families in Ireland were given a very clear picture of just how cruel, callous, calculating, and downright racist the Israeli authorities could be when it came to the children of Palestine.

Activists and clubs across Ireland had raised funds to bring some of the most talented young footballers in Gaza to Ireland and, for reasons best known to themselves, the Israeli authorities picked out one of the boys and decided he could not travel.

The trip was delayed by three weeks and on the verge of being cancelled at one stage because of delays in obtaining permission to travel from the Israeli authorities, who controlled everything that entered and left Gaza in 2016.

Eventually, 14 boys aged 10 to 14 were allowed to travel. The members of the Al-Helal Academy, who came from all over the Gaza Strip, represented Palestine with pride and won every one of their games across the Republic of Ireland during a ten-day tour.

One of their beloved team-mates, Karem Zaidan, was refused permission to travel. A cynic, or a not so cynical person, might have wondered if horrific facial injuries suffered by Karem during an Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2009 was the reason he was forced to stay at home.

Perhaps the Israeli authorities did not want Irish host families to witness the injuries he sustained during one of their regular bombardments of the tiny strip of land, which is half the size of tiny Co. Louth (Ireland’s smallest county) and where 50% of the people were children.

At any rate, the children never forgot Karem during their tour of Ireland. The kept in touch with him via video calls after every game in Ireland — the Irish clubs were startled by the talent of the youngsters who won every game with ease.

The Irish mothers were also startled by how small and undernourished the children from Gaza were compared to boys of the same age in Ireland. It was not hard to understand how Israel seemed to control every calorie eaten by the people of Gaza or that the UN had declared the tiny strip to be “unliveable” by 2020.

But the Al-Helal boys brought joy everywhere they went during that Irish tour and even met the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, after they were guests of honour at a League of Ireland game between Galway United and Dundalk at Eamon Deacy Park in Galway.

The children got to showcase their talents before Galway United’s biggest crowd of the season. Al-Helal played an exhibition game during the half-time break in the match between Galway United and Dundalk and fans chanted “stand up for Palestine” from the packed stand.

Only two adults were allowed to travel with the boys. Team psychologists were told that they had to stay at home when the Al-Helal academy hoped they could accompany them on their first ever trip outside Gaza.

Al-Helal’s ground in northern Gaza was bombed by Israel in both 2012 and 2014, long before the events of October 7, 2023, and the mass slaughter which has taken place since then.

During that 2016 tour Al-Helal won their games against Ballybrack FC (Dublin), Pike Rovers (Limerick) and Kinvara United (Galway). They also played three matches in Tipperary, beating two teams from Nenagh AFC and one from Nenagh Celtic.

Seven adults — including a child psychologist — were originally supposed to accompany the boys. Five of them were not allowed to travel.

Many of the boys on the team were traumatized by the 2014 Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip. More than 2,250 Palestinians, including 551 children, were killed in that attack and a circus in a field on the Clare-Galway border gave them a respite from the stifling siege in which so few people were allowed in and out of Gaza.

“We have been working on this for the past three years. It’s the first time we came here to Ireland. The results have been fantastic. It has given us hope for future operations like this,” the club chairman, Ayed Abu-Ramadan, told me at the time.

The boys returned to Ireland in 2017, but since then they have never been allowed out of Gaza. Even though Gaza Action Ireland had raised funds to cover their trips, Israel simply refused them permission to travel. The hope Ayed had after those brilliant ten days in Ireland, that football academies in Gaza could forge links with Irish clubs, has evaporated.

And their club has suffered unbelievable tragedy since those trips to Ireland in 2016 and 2017.

One of the children who delighted football families all around Ireland has been murdered in Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza since October 2023.

At least seven other children from the Al-Helal club have been murdered by Israel.

And their ground has been destroyed.

At least ten children from the Al-Mohtarafeen Academy, equally talented with dreams of playing overseas, have also been murdered by Israel over the past three years.

Soccer in the strip has been destroyed.

The lives of talented children have been decimated.

Last week, UNICEF estimated that more than 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023, in what many people now see as the Gaza genocide.

For the most talented young footballers in Gaza, lockdowns, cancelled games, and travel restrictions were a fact of life long before October 2023. But the scale of the devastation inflicted upon the child footballers since then is unthinkable.

Not being able to travel to Ireland for a week of football is hardly a huge issue right now among Gaza’s two million residents, half of whom are children and almost 80% of whom are refugees from what is now Israel, while bombs continue to fall during a ceasefire and so many families are trying to survive in tents after their homes were destroyed.

And now, ten years on from that fabulous trip to Ireland, a trip which gave them so much solidarity and hope, it is unthinkable for the child footballers of Palestine that Ireland would play Israel in a Nations League game after almost three years of relentless slaughter.

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) are hardly reflecting the wishes of the majority of Irish football fans when they say that the Nations League fixtures against Israel will go ahead on September 27 in Hungary and on October 4 in Bosnia.

By moving the home leg away from Dublin, and excluding the Irish fans, they are hardly showing leadership or moral courage on this issue. And they are putting our young football internationals in a horrible position.

Ireland played a leading role in bringing about the end of Apartheid in South Africa thanks to a sporting boycott in the 1980s and it can play a leading role again by ending the depravity of “normalising” relations with Israel by playing soccer internationals with a country which bombs children in tents in one of the most crowded places on earth.

“If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said back in 2021.

As a fan of the Irish football team, as a season ticket holder at Galway United, I am waiting for someone in authority in Irish soccer to show some moral courage. Israel should not be playing in European football as it murders and maims so many talented young footballers and we just need one country to stand up and say that this is wrong.

It is time to stop the game.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.