Major boycott opportunity as Ireland football team set to face ‘Israel’

Activists and politicians are urging the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to boycott upcoming Nations League fixtures against the illegitimate settler-colony ‘Israel’. In a remarkable twist of fate, the Republic of Ireland has ended up in the same group as the land thieves for the 2026-2027 UEFA Nations League. This means Europe’s most pro-Palestine nation will potentially face-off against the world’s most anti-Palestine band of genocidal thugs.

Kosovo and Austria are the other teams in the group. Ireland are due to play Israel in September and October 2026.

However, the likes of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) have demanded things don’t even get that far. The pro-Palestine campaign group said:

The apartheid state should have been expelled from UEFA for its crimes against Palestinians, long before its genocidal war on Gaza. We demand that the FAI refuse to play these fixtures. We need a national sporting body to stand up and call the bluff of the governing organisations. Boycott apartheid Israel all day, every day until freedom for Palestine.

Boycott is the essential tool to prevent Zionist sportwashing

Unlike in the case of Russia, UEFA and FIFA — the administrative bodies for football in Europe and worldwide respectively — have pissed about endlessly when it comes to getting rid of the genocidaires squatting illegally on historic Palestine. They banned Russia almost immediately after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet nearly two and a half years into the world’s first live-streamed genocide, perpetrated by the Netanyahu regime, they have dodged removing ‘Israel’.

Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit (PBP) also called for refusing to play the fixtures:

The Government should stop trying to normalise the Israeli regime. Israel is not a normal state, it is a regime based entirely on ethnic cleansing, apartheid and barbaric genocide of Palestinians. Like apartheid South Africa, boycott can help dismantle this cruel regime.

Sporting and cultural boycotts were indeed crucial to ostracising that racist regime. The likes of Eurovision and the Nations League are crucial to maintaining the Zionist charade of straddling two continents. ‘Israel’ is Schrödinger‘s Colony, existing in two (terror) states simultaneously: both a ‘nice, normal white European country’ just like us, as it supposedly shows by competing in the above contests. Yet we are asked to believe its inhabitants are indigenous to the land they’ve been stealing for the past 100 years, despite largely arriving from overseas to steal the territory from its rightful owners — the Palestinians.

Boyd Barrett was referring to comments from the pathetic Micheál Martin. The treacherous Taoiseach once again showed his fealty to Ireland’s masters by declaring:

It [the matches against ‘Israel’] should go ahead, and I think the FAI has taken the correct decision to fulfil the fixture.

RTE say Martin has said there is “no official boycott of Israel in Ireland”. The question is why, especially when the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is calling for it. There is no prospect of the Zionist entity changing of its own accord. It can only be shifted by external pressure and that means boycott — wreck its economy, and cut all ties with it culturally and in the sporting realm.

Others must join Ireland to force UEFA’s hand

Previous calls by activists to boycott athletic contests with the terrorist pseudo-state have been unsuccessful. Some members of the Irish women’s basketball team refused to travel for a fixture in Riga against the Zionist entity. Irish players then refused to shake hands with the land thieves on the other side. The match ultimately went ahead, however.

The FAI did pass a vote in November 2025 calling for the illegal settler-colony to be banned from international football. However, it seems the heads of Irish football are less keen when it actually comes to putting this into practice themselves. The FAI is adamant that the Nations League games will go ahead. They say they have consulted with UEFA, who are threatening disqualification if Ireland refuse to play.

The means of solving this problem is much like that faced by workers at their place of employment. If only one threatens to rebel, it’s trivial for the employer to say “fine, piss off — I’ll have no trouble replacing just you”. The task for the boss becomes much harder if everyone gets in a union and threatens to walk out.

That’s what’s needed here — with sufficient pressure from local activists in a country where the vast majority of people will oppose playing ‘Israel’, Ireland can provide the credible threat of withdrawal.

The trick will be working with other nations to get them to join this threat, forming a united front that the craven bosses at UEFA can’t ignore. If successful, it could be the beginning of the end for the Zionist fake-state’s continued sport-washing of its disgusting atrocities.

Featured image via the Canary