Last day in Israel. Flying home tomorrow. Amazing country. Wonderful, kind resilient people with breathtaking history.
We've spoken to politicians, journalists, activists from all sides and leant a huge amount.
It's been the trip of a lifetime and I've made friends for life.
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
At the Ireland-Israel UEFA game I met @YosephHaddad, an Israeli Arab. He told me about the lie that Israel is an apartheid state.
By trying to ban Israel from soccer Irish people miss out on hearing the truth.
#Ireland#Israel#UEFA
Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them.
October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands.
The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2.
That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor.
So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly.
They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.
On GB News, Christopher Hope reports that Reform UK expects even more political donations coming soon.
I hope so. I will never get bored of the hysterical, hypocritical gibberish from Labour.
Dead-eyed Commie Mamdani is trying to bankrupt America. You cannot import people into your country who drain your taxes. Normal countries do not allow immigrants to be dependent on taxpayer $$ without paying in first. This isn't cruel, it's just math.
The area was part of British Mandatory Palestine (and earlier Ottoman rule), historically called Judea and Samaria. Jordan introduced the name "West Bank" after occupying it in 1948 and annexing it in 1950.
No independent Palestinian state with sovereignty has ever existed there.
Jews held sovereignty in the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, plus the later Hasmonean Kingdom, centered in the region.
You will block me after this reply.
Paul, you have hurt my Palestinian cause. My family and I have been Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian for centuries. Your “activisim” empowered extremists amongst us. It made them think terrorism is the way to get sympathy from the PGs of the world. You have what we call the soft bigotry of low expectations. You expect so little of us. You think we are always victims and never wrong.
You masquerade everything under “humanity”, yet you fail to see that Palestinain extremism has denied humanity from millions of Palestinians who just want to live in peace with Israel and just get a job that pays well and send their kids to college. You made that dream a little bit harder to attain for Palestinians.
Enjoy your billions of dollars. Thanks for nothing.
And see you in another simulation. Free Palestine from simpleton Westerners.