Ireland women's basketball team refuse to shake hands with Israel
Ireland women's basketball team refuse to shake hands with Israel
Ireland women's basketball team refuse to shake hands with Israel before their EuroBasket 2025 qualifier in Riga.
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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.