Israel player Dor Saar said on Wednesday that the Ireland team is “quite anti-Semitic”.
Well I never…
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.
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.
Ah okay, that makes some more sense. I wouldn’t want to shake hands with folks who slung slurs at me out of nowhere either! It begs the question as to why they called them anti-Semetic in the first place.
Largely because of ireland’s history of being brutalized in their own home, they have consistently had the strongest support for the palestinian cause in all of europe. The israeli player was almost certainly mischaracterising support for palestinians as antisemitism.
Ah yeah, that makes it much easier to identify the AH here, thanks!
NP! This story is fairly easy to understand with a little context, the lack of it in most of the reporting is quite glaring.
To be clear here, “Anti-semetic” is the slur, not whatever imagines slight Israeli players accused Ireland of.
Yeah, exactly. Whipping out a charge of anti-Semitism against folks who just don’t happen to agree with how your government is handling their business is absolutely a slur.
handling their business
It’s okay to say “committing genocide.”
The biggest crime amongst liberals: Being impolite to the oppressors.
Good.
❤️🇮🇪
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.
That is still kind of the same thing, they blame the whole team for the comments of one player.
Sorry, let me get the full quote and some more context:
In an interview published on Tuesday by the Israeli Basketball Association, Saar addressed the upcoming match with Ireland. “It’s known that they are quite antisemitic and it’s no secret, and maybe that’s why a strong game is expected,” she said. “We talk about it among ourselves. We know they don’t love us and we will leave everything on the field always and in this game especially.”
An official quote at a formal press interview that implicates the entire team.
Have the been antisemetic? If I was on a team, I would not be expected to be blamed for what my teammates had to say.
Have the been antisemetic?
See my comment you originally replied to.
what my teammates
If an official representative of the team slags off the other side without reason before the game, and says the entire team thinks this, with no apology or attempt to clarify that that person was wrong and only speaking for themselves, that’s shitty behavior from the entire team.
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.
Sports players are in many ways political representatives of their nation to an extent that it can be warranted to treat them as such. It’s not likely they have anything against the individuals (at least not all of them) on the team, but refusing to extend sports etiquette to your opponents in a match like this shows that you don’t respect the nation or their current actions. In one sense, people are powerless against a mob of their peers. But in another, ‘Americans’ voted for Trump without obviously visible voter suppression (not saying it doesn’t exist, but you can’t expect someone from another country to understand the nuances of gerrymandering, voter ID laws, etc). While it would feel bad personally, its completely understandable to me why someone may be treated differently when the nation they currently represent is a fascist or genocidal one. If enough people cared, they could stop their nation, but at the cost to their own safety and comfort.
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.
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…
That would be true if we didn’t have an electoral college. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
Yikes why would defend someone who sung the praises of noted War Criminal Henry Kissinger?
The alternative was worse. Most Presidential elections aren’t about picking the candidate you want - they boil down to who you dislike less.
Besides, I wasn’t “defending” anyone; I was simply pointing out a fact.
They both approximate perfect representation close enough. If the difference between one government or the other comes down to variations that are basically explained by the weather being good or bad on voting day, you can’t really claim that the government isn’t representative.
Just because it didn’t represent YOUR opinion, it doesn’t make it less representative. A truly representative government will make decisions that align with 10% of the population 10% of the time. So if 10% of the population want to bomb Canada a perfectly representative government will make it happen every 40 years or so.
So you have fully supported the actions of both the Biden and Trump administrations?
