Israel player Dor Saar said on Wednesday that the Ireland team is “quite anti-Semitic”.
Well I never…
Imagine being an Israeli Jew and not know what those two words mean… It’s like someone thinking everyone in America is white, and that white and American mean the same thing.
Good.
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.
The Israeli player was culture washing. The Palestinians are a semitic people.
Pardon the copy/paste:
Antisemitism is understood to mean prejudice against Jews.
Semitic languages is the formal name for the branch of the Afroasiatic language family that includes modern Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic and ancient languages like Akkadian and Phoenician.
Semitic people isn’t a term that anyone uses for real, but if they did it would refer to peoples who have traditionally spoke semitic languages.
It’s frustrating that the term antisemitism refers to prejudice against only a specific subset of the peoples who would fall under the semitic label. But deliberately misunderstanding the term antisemitism is also quite frustrating.
Rather than deliberately misunderstanding, maybe they are trying to reclaim it in response to its widespread misuse in recent years.
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.”
Another article about this that makes it clearer.
- Ireland team wanted to boycott game due to Israel’s actions
- Israeli player called Ireland antisemitic
- Ireland team refused to shake hands. Possibly would have happened also without #2
To be fair, being called anti-semitic by a bunch of hate filled genocidal Nazis isn’t really the worst thing in the world. It’s kind of like Samuel Little calling somebody a misogynistic bully.
To be even more fair, it’s culture washing as the Palestinians are a semitic people, and the Israeli player called the Irish players anti-Semitic because of their well known support of the Palestinian people.
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.
Getting thumped because of 4 injuries and 5 players refusing to play against Israel. A boycott would have achieved a lot more. The fine would be nothing compared to the attention it would have received.
Attention doesn’t pay 180k tho
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I want to high five each one of these ladies.
It’s too bad they’re such anti-semites. /s
Fuck Israel.
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.
The Israeli player was culture washing. The Palestinian people are a semitic people.
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.
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.
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It might suck, but yeah we kinda deserved to be excluded from the world stage for allowing trump to be president. Anyone that is willing to represent Israel/Russia/Saudi Arabia right now is kinda a piece of shit.
This implies that it is the people’s fault that Trump was elected, when it’s the result of a larger systemic issue.
These people are choosing to represent their country, not just going about their private business.
You don’t go around calling people out for it though. You agree with them that Trump is a jerk and that you didn’t want him to become a president. This is different. The Israeli team called the Irish team antisemitic because they don’t like what Israel is doing. The truth though is that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the genocide that Israel is inflicting on Palestine
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.
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.
The hours everybody spends in supermarkets, picking out the things they don’t want to buy, so they’re only left with what they want… But the alternative is worse…
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.
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…
But with just some VERY MINOR tweaks to the system, the “views of the people” would be very different. In the US, the system is OPENLY engineered to preserve existing power structures, in ways that have accumulated over the decades (Jerrymandering, Electoral College and First Past The Post all add up…)
And everybody over there is beginning to work together and rise up against it…
So you have fully supported the actions of both the Biden and Trump administrations?
That would make me american…
Gotcha, extrapolate out to the country you wish.
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So in this developed country are you unable to extrapolate out ideas?
Seriously though dude, no one cares if you are from canada or Denmark or Spain, I know you are 100% aware of american politics
