SIPTU has reiterated its demand that the Government and the FAI immediately withdraw from forthcoming football fixtures against Israel, warning that history will judge where Ireland stood while genocide was committed in Gaza.
In this week’s Sunday Read SIPTU Deputy General Secretary, Greg Ennis writes that Irish footballers and workers should not be forced to choose between their livelihoods and their conscience, and confirmed that SIPTU has written to RTÉ urging it to refuse to broadcast the games.
The intervention comes amid growing anger among workers across the broadcasting, transport and hospitality sectors, many of whom have told their union they do not want to be associated with the fixtures in any way.
The genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon are crimes against humanity, wherein future generations will judge us all on where we stood on these matters. International sport is inherently political; it showcases a nation and its people to the world.
Israel, as other States have done before them, is using the spectacle of sport to try to hide their blood-stained hands and Ireland must not be complicit in this charade by playing football against them.
The IDF’s colonisation of Palestine continues. An Israeli Football Team, largely made up of Veteran and Reservist IDF Soldiers, does not deserve to be in the same country, let alone the same football stadium as the Irish National Team, be it in Lansdowne Road, Budapest or anywhere else for that matter.
Israel and its so-called Defence Force has been directly responsible for the deaths of almost 600 Palestinian Footballers in the last 32 months. Israel has destroyed multiple football facilities including the Sports Club Stadium in Gaza and has used other football facilities as detention centres.
There is no way that our Boys in Green should be left pondering these matters over the summer months. The Irish Government, who recognised the Palestinian State needs to be consistent, show real leadership and deliver on the will of the Irish people. It is simply not acceptable for our Government to disengage from the issue of whether these fixtures should be fulfilled.
Leaving it up to the FAI is a cop out and Ministers O’Donovan and McConalogue, turning your back and burying your heads in the sand, is unbecoming of Ministerial Office and is a betrayal of the strongly held view of the Irish people.
If the FAI and the Government do not see sense and boycott these games, they shouldn’t expect footballers or other workers to follow them into infamy. As a major funder of the FAI, the Government cannot seek to hide away from its responsibilities any longer, and it must insist that the FAI does the right thing without further delay and boycott these games.
It is abundantly clear that SIPTU and the 800,000 strong Irish Trade Union movement alongside the rest of Irish society, is strongly opposed to the playing of these matches. Prior to the FAI’s cowardly decision to move the October 4th fixture overseas, discussions had taking place with our elected Shop Stewards and Activists within the Broadcasting, Transport and Hospitality Sectors, which included those employed in the FAI and RTÉ.
These discussions were necessary, as workers had expressed their anger and dismay regarding the proposed fixtures against Israel and did not want to be associated with it.
Like our Footballers, workers should not be placed in this situation. Our Union has committed to SIPTU members that if they feel they cannot support the playing of these fixtures in any way whatsoever, we will fully support them, should they adopt such a stance.
Union members in Ireland believe that it goes against their understanding of humanity, of empathy, and of opposition to supremacism to assist in any way with the playing of these matches. In the unconscionable situation that these games do go ahead, SIPTU last night wrote to RTE and asked them to refuse to broadcast the fixtures, as our members in RTE do not wish to be associated with any such production.
Whatever credibility the FAI had, it has little or none now. Having previously called for the exclusion of Israeli teams from international competition, it is unacceptable and hypocritical in the extreme that it would now demand that its employees and players engage in fixtures with Israel.
Our members in the FAI do not want to be part of a rank hypocrisy in world football, which sees Russian teams rightly banned due to their country’s illegal war in Ukraine, while another State, that according to the ICJ, is perpetrating a legally defined genocide, is being allowed to sportswash its monstrous crimes.
Irish sport has not been placed in such a predicament since the days of the sporting boycott against South Africa. The reputations of players and sporting organisations who broke that boycott were severely tarnished, and we do not wish to see this being repeated, although it seems quite clear that the Irish footballers themselves are rightly questioning their own participation in these fixtures also.
Losing six points and UEFA ranking places is absolutely meaningless, when set against the genocide being committed by an apartheid State, which recently celebrated its intention to conduct a mass political murder campaign against Palestinian prisoners later this year.
Players should not be placed in the invidious position of having to choose between their place in a team and their conscience. As with the boycott of apartheid South Africa, it is time for Ireland, to again show leadership on this issue. We must not be intimidated by the rogue regime in Tel Aviv; we must not force international football players to sully their good names; we must stand up for humanity in the face of horror.
Moving these fixtures from Dublin to a neutral venue behind closed doors does not resolve the issue. It merely is an attempt to move the Palestinian picket line out of sight. Our position is clear – Don’t pass that picket line in Dublin, in Budapest or anywhere else.
The Irish people have shown, time and time again, that they stand with the Palestinian people and against genocide. The Government’s failure to so far action that clear view, proves how out of touch it is with its own people and its recent abdication regarding the need to take decisive action on the cancellation of these games against Israel is disgraceful.