taken from another forum.........
Support IRELAND and PALESTINE on June 4th
Ireland play Israel in the second leg of the World Cup Qualifiers in Lansdowne Rd. on Saturday, June 4th.
As Palestinian solidarity campaigners and football supporters, we want to use this important sporting occasion to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian population who, for the past 38 years, have endured a brutal military occupation that includes curfews, closures, checkpoints and deliberate destruction of homes, civilian infrastructure and farmland. In effect - ethnic cleansing.
We are urging those attending the Ireland -v- Israel match to show solidarity by displaying the flag of Palestine, so that our protest will be seen worldwide by people watching the match.
Racism in Israeli football
The Israeli government counters charges of racism and ill-treatment of Palestinians by pointing to the inclusion of two Arab-Israeli players in the Israeli team. In reality, these team members have been subjected to vile racist taunting at both Israeli league and international matches by sections of Israeli football fans. "No Arabs, no terrorism" is one such chant regularly heard at games.
Repression of Palestinian Football Team
Whatever about the abuse meted out to Israeli players of Palestinian descent, the situation faced by the Palestinian team as a result of Israeli apartheid is a lot more serious. Severe travel restrictions have hampered the team’s attempt to qualify for the World Cup. Israel prevented 5 players from travelling to the World Cup qualifier against Uzbekistan. Team members are regularly detained at checkpoints and prevented from travelling to and from practice and games.
Dying for the Game
The Israeli government’s commitment to ‘fair play’ in sport was witnessed most recently in Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. On the 9th of April 2005, a group of boys were playing football in an open area when the ball was kicked towards the border fence. When the kids ran after it, Israeli soldiers opened fire at them, killing two, aged 14 and 15. It is conceivable that by Kick Off on June 4th, other such atrocities will have occurred.
Politics and Sport
Some people say that politics and sport don’t mix and that politics should be kept out of sport. We argue that the two are often inseparable. The families and friends of the kids in Rafah and across Palestine might tend to agree.
As sports fans ourselves, we can point to examples in history where sporting events have been used by callous governments to influence their political standing abroad. The international rugby tour by the South African Springboks was intended to bolster the image of apartheid abroad. The economic and sporting boycott of South Africa in the 1980s had a huge effect in raising public awareness and helped to bring down Apartheid.
SOME FACTS
o Over 3,600 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army since September 2000. 722 of these were children.
o Over 12,500 homes demolished and over 60,000 people made homeless.
o 87 sick and injured, including children, have died at checkpoints as a result of being denied passage to hospitals.
o The restriction of movement and the deliberate destruction of Palestinian infrastructure have meant in the almost total collapse of the Palestinian economy.
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We urge all Irish people, and especially football fans, to join the campaign to highlight injustice in Palestine by flying the flag on June 4th. Flags will be distributed outside Lansdowne Road.
We ask fans to bring in flags and banners and display them during the match.
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Events on June 4th in Dublin
Central Bank, Dame St. * 3pm * Street Theatre + March to
Israeli Embassy * 5pm * Picket
Lansdowne Road * from 6pm * Leafleting & flags distribution for Match
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Want to help the campaign?
Phone 085 7207775 or e-mail flagsforfootball@eircom.net
I thought you were off the drink Ronnie?
"No, I drink to help me mind my own business....can I get you one? (c) Ronnie Drew
While I don't think you can separate football and politics, I won't go in for this one, thanks. The Israeli-Palestine conflict is a miserable one but is certainly not a black and white one, it's not 'Israeli bad, Palestinian good'. I think both could have done a lot more for peace so I'll stay well out of this one.
I don't believe people inside the ground should be using occasion for political statements. Likewise i would object to any boing of the israeli nation anthem too.
Can do whatever you choose outside the ground as its a free country.
I always wondered about that. People - especially those in power - are always saying you can't mix sport and politics. The reality is sport (football in particular) is about the only place you'd get 30,000 people in one place with huge national overtones - countries playing, national anthems, etc. My cynical mind says that those people in power have a lot to gain from discouraging protests/political statements at such mass gatherings - keep the masses quiet and all that. I don't see any problem using sporting events to make a political point (not as if our politicians listen to us whenever we try to rationalise with them anyway), so long as it doesn't take over the event. Boo/sit down for the anthem, raise a banner and then watch the match.Originally Posted by pete
It obviously goes without saying that you have to be consistent - China, the US, Turkey, England, etc., etc.
Just my view anyway...
Paste it, somewhere else you bl**dy tree hugger!!!
Yeah, lets give Israel even more incentive to get a result by waving Palestinian flags in their facesDo what you like outside the ground and in the city centre, but i'd draw the line at handing out flags and encouraging hostility. Ireland is a neutral nation, so lets keep it that way
Let me parrot Donal81's excellent post. It's not our place to get involved in what is a very messy situation. Israel has a number of Arab players on their team so I am not exactly sure what the OP is getting at. We don't need to politicize sport any further than it already is.
There is no such thing as a miracle cure, a free lunch or a humble opinion.
Wasnt the guy who scored against us an Arab ?
Yes he is. All I can say is WISE UP!!!!! to these gobshiiites!!I will hopefully get a ticket for this game(I'll be there anyway) hope I don't see any of these tree-huggers, I'll find it hard to bite my tongue, it is not the place for this at a football game, this is an important game, focus should be on one thing only, getting behind our team and winning. Clear off!!!!!!
Rather the get into the rights and wrongs of the political situation in the
region, I think the best thing the Irish supporters can do is get on with
the business of supporting their team.
If we get a good result over there I am sure the Palestinians will be as pleased
as the Irish.
Any kind of protest would probably only serve to fire up the Israeli players
anyway so it would probably be counter effective.
Putting Israel out of the finals should be protest enough for anyone and that
is what we should concentrate on, its a simple non-political aim.
leave the politics outside the ground. as far as i`m aware the israeli players have done nothing wrong. should be shown the same respect as any other team that comes to landsdowne
There's only one slant to the game I'm bothered about.
What do ye make of this?
The Irish Times - Monday, May 17, 1999
Sport and politics a lethal mixture
By TOM HUMPHRIES
I had just finished telling my shocked partner the details of my twenty seven year love affair with sweeties when Liveline came on. Joe was struggling. Nothing identifies the character of the lesser brained sports fan than the shrill call, usually heard in the long grass of radio phone-in programmes, to the effect that sport and politics don't mix. Everytime we hear the light refrain the thought occurs that naivete and stupidity have at last been mated successfully.
If you went to the game in Dalymount in 1955 between Yugoslavia and Ireland you engaged in a political act. And well done. If you feel, however, that permitting Yugoslavia to play football here next month is no different or that waving a white hankerchief during the playing of the Yugoslav national anthem will somehow make things alright you are sadly deluded.
By playing against Yugoslavia, by attending the game and treating it like any other match we will be engaging in a political act even more shameful than that which we engaged in May 1974 when the national team went to Santiago, Chile and played in the national stadium before the blood had dried on the slaughter which occurred there.
WE became the first country to visit there in the space of a year. We went for a friendly. There was a lesson there already.
The Soviet Union were supposed to visit for a World Cup game the previous November but conceded the points instead. Chile duly kicked off and scored into the empty Soviet goal but it was the Russians who emerged with all the honour.
It doesn't really matter in the current instance whether or not you approve of NATO's hawkish, morally imperfect behaviour around the Balkans or if you are disturbed by the inconsistency with which the policemen of the world wave their truncheon, the fact is that we are being asked to partake in the frivolity of international football at a time when the state of the rival team is on the one hand being bombed and on the other is engaged in unspeakable acts of ethnic cleansing.
Lets not pretend that right now sport and politics don't mix, Yugoslav players all over Europe have made it patently clear that they do mix by striking, by displaying banners, by urging each other to fight for the homeland.
Lets not flatter ourselves by thinking that the waving of white handkerchiefs in Lansdowne Road will be a topic of alarmed conversation in the bunkers of Belgrade or that Yugoslav television will linger wondrously on our peevish little faces as we make our facile little gesture. Let us not effect to imagine that the game won't be exhibited as an example of the Milosevic regime's happy relationship with another small and oft beleaguered country.
Sport and politics has always mixed in Yugoslavia. Soccer and politics have been siamese twins since the foundation of the state. The first club to be founded in Yugoslavia back in 1911 were Hadjuk Split named after local fighters who had railed bloodily against the Ottoman empire.
This is a country where teams play for the Marshall Tito cup, where they abandoned half completed games in 1980 when Tito died, where partizan are still the army team and where Milosevic stopped his comrade and rival Arkan (Zeljko Raznatovic) from buying Red Star Belgrade because ownership of the club would give Arkan too great a power base in the capital.
Instead Arkan whose Serbian Volunteer Guard or Tigers (formed from the dregs of Red Star supporters clubs) were to the fore in the slaughter of muslims throughout Bosnia and have been reported to be in action in Kosovo bought an apartment which overlooks the Red Star ground and a team which now rivals Red Star.
He took over Obilic two years ago pumping in sufficient cash to get them to the head of the Yugoslav first division.
(The club by the way is named for a Serb hero who stabbed a Turkish commander to death before the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389).
IT'S NOT just cash which has bouyed what was once a humble division two team. There has been a good mix of bribery and corruption as well. The man they call Commandant has been seen grinning with amusement as the thugs who patrol his terraces chant "score and we'll kill you" at rival forwards.
Two of the panel selected to play Croatia last month were from Obilic. No doubt the chattels of Arkan will be selected for Dublin too.
Sport and politics don't mix bleat the woolly heads on the airwaves. We have no quarrel with the ordinary people of Serbia they say grandly. Well perhaps the worst of them are only obeying orders and swallowing propaganda but we have an obligation to ourselves not to allow soccer and our team to be fed into the grinder.
We owe sport a duty of decency.
Ask the dead of Vukovar and Bjeljina where muslim civilians were slaughtered by Arkan if they might make a murmur about this game proceeding as mass graves are being filled elsewhere. In Bjeljina it was that Serb TV filmed Arkan leaning across the body of a dead muslim to embrace Biljana Plavsic, soon to become serb president of Bosnia.
Before we wave our hankies and do the Mexican wave why not ask the players of FC Pristina if they are currently over the moon?
Or what about the trembling refugees whom we grudgingly allow to seep into out bloated little country? What do they think of us playing footie with the boys from Belgrade? Do they fret that the linen in the corporate tents will be crisp enough for us to dine on?
No doubt the FAI have moral concerns here but the issues of fat money and three points appears to have paralysed them. The team just plays football, see. Yet when the socialite Diana of Wales died in a car crash a couple of years ago the team weren't beyond expressing their profound grief by wearing black armbands during a game in Iceland. And Mick McCarthy seems, regrettably, to have no difficulty misplacing his inate decency to appear grinning in newspaper shots taken outside a courtroom in which a journalist who once urged a Lansdowne Road crowd to boo Roy Keane had just been sueing another journalist.
Synthetic grief, issues of journalistic pique and the assisted sale of Opel motor cars are matters in which the team or management are permitted to take sides in. About ethnic cleansing they are perforce silent. If that is the case let the government put an end to it now.
Politics and sport always mix. In grants, in swimming inquiries, in civic receptions, in anthems, on days of sheer flagwaving nationalism. They mix. Always. It is time for politics to intervene on our behalf. After all the Irish team do not belong to the FAI, they represent all of us and take our name with them onto the field.
© The Irish Times
I dont agree that we should bring the political situation to the game. Our efforts should be on supporting our team not on getting the backs of our opposition and rile them up even more. I do think comments like "tree huggers" is not helpful either. I always thought a tree hugger was an abusive term for somebody who is concerned with green and environmental issues. I dont see how this relates to protesting against Israel though. Lets get behind the team
In Trap we trust
Decent enough article.
I was at the game versus Yugoslavia but I don't recall 'white hankerchief waving' at their national anthem. did it happen?
I thought you were off the drink Ronnie?
"No, I drink to help me mind my own business....can I get you one? (c) Ronnie Drew
agreed. i dont know what a tree hugger is, i have never seen one, but if it is someone trying to compare people that love trees, with people protesting against the invasion and suppression of another country then they are two totally different things.I do think comments like "tree huggers" is not helpful either
Glad to see that someone has decided to organise some kind of protest. These Nazi scum shouldn't even be allowed into the country, never mind be allowed participate in world cup qualifiers. "ISRAEL" OUT
i think i'll be supporting it. palestinians deserve our support. the IRA did plenty wrong in their time as well but the basis behind the arguement is in favour of palestine
Fair enough, maybe I should not say tree-huggers, but what I meant was, these environmental TH,tend to latch on to any type of protest, it's like a day out for them, you know? Irish flag, not a Palestinian flag, it is an Ireland football game,
hah?????hese Nazi scum shouldn't even be allowed into the country
ya its an ireland game i think that it is just stupid to be waving any palestinian flags.
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