It’s always so heartening to log on here and see Irish people speaking up - remembering the 10/7 massacre, standing with Israel, and calling out antisemitism. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again and again and again: the Irish people who are brave enough to do so don’t get anywhere near the credit they deserve 🫂 🇮🇪🇮🇱

Jennifer Damti - 'Kim didn’t realise there was like seven or eight Toyota vans full of terrorists and they just shot everywhere. They just shot them, slaughtered them like ducks, and that’s the reason I’m here, because I want the world to condemn this behaviour. I didn’t bring my children up to hate anybody...' 💔 I can't believe it's been three years already. October 7th changed everything. Forever. May our beautiful Irish-Israeli sister Kim's memory forever be a blessing.

This is a great piece by the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, and the strongest point in it is that the opportunity for ordinary human contact was lost. A football match could have created something that political arguments cannot - ordinary Irish people and Israelis actually meeting one another, talking, and seeing the human beings behind the headlines. Irish discourse about Israel is incredibly narrow, partly because some people are obsessed with incorrectly projecting our conflict with Britain onto this one. A lot of people here don’t actually understand the conflict and know very little about the history of the region. I’ve said it before: I’ve personally met many people in Ireland who didn’t even know that Israeli Arabs exist, despite the fact that there are Israeli Arabs on the Israeli football team. And then there is the history we raised when the #StopTheGame campaign was pushing for this match not to take place. Ireland played Nazi Germany multiple times in the 1930s - including in 1936, after the Nuremberg Laws had been enacted, and again in 1939, just months after Kristallnacht and shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. In that 1939 match, Irish players performed the Nazi salute. When this was raised, the #StopTheGame campaign did not condemn Nazi Germany, its atrocities, or the fact that Ireland had played them repeatedly during that period. Instead, the response was deflection, insults, mockery and taunting of people online who tried to raise the point - all of it in public, for the whole world to see. Then there is Finn Azaz. Finn is an Irish-Israeli who could have played for Ireland, England or Israel. He chose Ireland - and look what happened to him! The second match is taking place on October 4th, just as Simchat Torah ends. The October 7th massacre took place on Simchat Torah three years ago. This could have been a great opportunity to commemorate Dor, Kim and Emily, and it would have been nice to see the Irish team commemorate them, even in the slightest way. As Kenny Cunningham himself pointed out in his article a few weeks ago (an article he was harassed for writing, and which took considerable courage to speak out in knowing what the reaction would be) paying tribute to the victims of the October 7th massacre, particularly those who were Irish, or even simply just showing respect for Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, would have been the decent and human thing to do.