Sir, – As a volunteer coach of young athletes, I have always been uneasy with the growing expectation that sportspeople should become participants in diplomatic conflicts.
Athletes train to compete, not to settle international disputes. Those responsibilities properly belong to governments and international sporting authorities such as Fifa, Uefa and the International Olympic Committee.
Yet there are moments when sport cannot pretend to exist in a moral vacuum.
Seeing one of your athletes pull on the green jersey for Ireland is among the proudest moments a coach can experience. It represents community, sacrifice and the belief that sport can bring people together across divisions.
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But that pride becomes difficult to separate from conscience when governing bodies refuse to act in the face of grave and sustained violations of international law.
Russia was rightly excluded from international sport following its invasion of Ukraine. During apartheid, the international isolation of South Africa from sporting, cultural, educational and social life played a major role in breaking the legitimacy of that regime. At the time, many argued that sport and politics should remain separate. History has judged otherwise.
We have witnessed the destruction of civilian life on a horrifying scale. Israel has also expanded military operations into Lebanon, while settler violence in the West Bank has intensified dramatically.
Reports indicate that more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the October 2023 uprising without a single prosecution of those responsible. Recent legislation reportedly permitting the death penalty only for Palestinians further underlines the existence of a discriminatory system that many international observers now openly describe as apartheid. The litany of atrocities seems to be never-ending.
At the same time, Israel continues to participate freely in international sporting and cultural events, while events such as Eurovision are increasingly viewed as vehicles for state image management and propaganda.
I take no pleasure in saying any of this. Nor do I hold individual Israeli players responsible for the actions of their government. The same argument could have been made for Russian athletes and for South African athletes during apartheid.
But if international sport is to retain any claim to moral consistency, then principles must apply equally.
For that reason, I believe the FAI should refuse to play fixtures against Israel until Fifa and Uefa apply the same standards they applied elsewhere. Irish players and supporters should not be placed in the position of normalising what much of the world increasingly sees as systemic injustice and collective punishment.
There are times when refusing to play is not an abandonment of sport, but a defence of the values sport claims to represent. – Yours, etc,
BARRY O’CONNOR,
Newbridge,
Co Kildare.
