I welcome this motion and will also support tomorrow's motion from the Social Democrats. Ireland must lead an international campaign to exclude Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, from all sporting fixtures and competitions and there must be no soccer games between Ireland and Israel at home in Ireland or on neutral grounds abroad. There is significant and growing opposition to these fixtures. In November 2025, 93% of FAI members voted to instruct the association to call on UEFA to suspend Israel. In May of this year, FAI general assembly members secured the numbers needed to call an emergency general meeting to vote on Ireland's participation in these soccer games. The call to refuse to play Israel is supported by the Irish football community, including the Professional Footballers' Association of Ireland and the Irish Football Supporters Partnership. Indeed, Irish Sport for Palestine has commenced judicial review proceedings. There is precedent for stopping these fixtures. In 1999, the then Fianna Fáil government prevented the Euro 2000 qualifier between Ireland and Yugoslavia because of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo and in 2022, FIFA and UEFA banned Russia from all club and international games after Poland and Sweden refused to play World Cup qualifiers. Ireland as a nation and as a people must not be complicit in genocide. We have a particular link with the Palestinian people through our own long history of British imperialist domination and our own genocidal famine, an Gorta Mór. Israel is still committing a genocide in Gaza and 75,000 Palestinians have died, including 20,000 children. Gaza itself is a wasteland. Water, energy, healthcare and educational infrastructure have been wiped out and 1,000 Palestinians have died since the ceasefire was announced. Under international law, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal. There are over 250 settlements with about 500,000 people there. These numbers are expanding on a daily basis. Settler violence is an ongoing threat to Palestinians in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and campaigns of harassment continue on a daily basis. This violence also targets Palestinian Christians. Their numbers have dropped tenfold. Seventy years ago Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, was 86% Christian. It is now 12% Christian. Israel's strategy against Christians is a combination of violence, economic hardship, permanent siege, apartheid and it is doing this to drive Palestinian Christians out of their homeland. Israel must be brought to book. Stopping the Irish-Israel fixtures would be a small but vital step in that direction.

Sentiment score: -0.12