A late Israeli equaliser in Bačka Topola closed an ill-tempered double-header in which Ireland's players turned football into protest — and the fallout now reaches Euro 2028.
Published 5 October 2026 · 00:03 GMT
For the second time in a week, an Ireland-Israel match began with a silence where a ritual should have been: no pre-match handshakes, no pennant exchange, Ireland's players bowing their heads during the Israeli anthem — all in black armbands for Palestinians killed in Gaza. Stand-in captain Caoimhin Kelleher, deputising for Dara O'Shea, completed the formalities with the referee, then pointedly avoided Israel captain Dor Peretz's outstretched hand.
The football was almost an afterthought. Troy Parrott's 39th-minute penalty, after Peretz fouled Jimmy Dunne, gave Ireland a half-time lead; a sideline disagreement as the teams left the field was quickly defused. Peretz atoned two minutes after the restart, poking home the 47th-minute equaliser. Israel hit the woodwork twice in a poor second half; neither side could find a winner. The 1-1 draw closed the double-header — Ireland had won the first meeting 3-0 in Debrecen six days earlier.
The protest choreography was precise because it was rehearsed. In Debrecen, O'Shea had refused Manor Solomon's handshake — shaking the officials' hands at the toss but not his counterpart's — and the Irish bowed their heads during the anthem; Solomon was benched for the return. Both fixtures happened only because the squad voted to play them: 14-8 in favour, after hours of deliberation that delayed the press conference and training.
The protest's facts are undisputed. The FAI confirmed beforehand: no handshakes, no pennant exchange, black armbands "for all lives lost in the conflict", match fees donated to charity, Austria-game profits likewise. The players declined all media duties. RTÉ provided only stripped-back coverage to meet contractual obligations — no studio, no commentary on the international feed, no analysis — and took no advertising or sponsorship. RTÉ also confirmed Ireland will boycott Eurovision for a second year over Israel's participation.
The pressure behind it is equally documented: 160+ Irish sportspeople signed an open letter urging the FAI to reconsider; demonstrators protested outside the Dublin team hotel; the SIPTU union displayed a giant poster by the River Liffey showing a blood-splattered ball, urging players to "go with your conscience" and not "play with genocide". Ex-coach Brian Kerr said the FAI had "lost the respect of the Irish people". Coach Heimir Hallgrimsson admitted the strain — "I felt that pressure growing day by day, and it's getting almost to a breaking limit now" — and his "we're not playing with genocide, we're playing against genocide" drew fury from Israel's federation, which called the remarks stupid and ignorant.
Israel's response has been defiant. Coach Ben-Shimon rejected claims of over-aggression: "I say to my players, 'this is the best way to play the cleanest football as you can, but be aggressive'... We are very moral human beings." Israel's players wore their own black armbands, for the October 7 victims. And at Saturday's press conference, an Israeli journalist's claim that Irish players had called opponents "monkeys" was denounced as "a lie" by FAI officer Kieran Crowley, who ended the press conference on the spot.
The great unknown is UEFA's. Europe's governing body has said nothing about the refused handshakes, anthem protests, boycotted media duties or aborted press conferences — and its silence is a decision, for now. Had Ireland refused to play, it faced fines; having played while protesting, the squad inhabits a grey zone the rulebook never anticipated. Whether Nyon acts, and against whom, sets the precedent for every future protest in European football.
Also unclear is how far the protest travels. The stance was tied to Gaza, but the machinery — squad vote, donated fees, broadcaster blackout, November's FAI motion asking UEFA to suspend Israel — is now a standing infrastructure of dissent. The FAI said it had to play or face sanctions, and the shadow over everything is Euro 2028, co-hosted with England, Wales and Scotland. A federation that asked UEFA to ban Israel will soon be UEFA's partner in staging its flagship tournament.
It matters because it is the most visible instance yet of the Gaza war migrating into Europe's public institutions. Football is not politics, goes the old line — but 22 players refusing handshakes on live television is a political act no press release can match, and Ireland's squad knew it. Armbands, bowed heads, donated fees: each calibrated to speak without speaking, in a country where, as the FAI acknowledged, "affinity with Palestinians is strong". For the Irish context, our Ireland country profile; for the other side, the Israel profile.
It matters for the precedent. Sport is where societies launder their hardest arguments — apartheid South Africa, the Moscow Olympics, kneeling NFL players — and what Ireland did across these two games is now a playbook: the squad vote as democratic cover, charity donations as moral offset, stripped-back broadcasting as institutional complicity. The next team wanting to protest a war it did not start won't invent the method. The Palestine profile traces the conflict at the root.
And it matters for what it reveals about neutrality's limits. UEFA moved the games, fined nobody, said nothing — the administrator's hope that the problem resolves itself. It didn't: it produced a 14-8 vote, a goalkeeper who wouldn't play, tennis balls with Palestinian flags thrown during the Austria game, a pitch invader with a Palestinian flag. Neutral venues don't neutralise politics. They just move it.
Look closely and the protest was engineered with lawyerly precision: refusing a handshake isn't refusing to play; bowing a head isn't disrupting an anthem; an armband isn't a slogan. The 14-8 squad vote was the masterstroke — converting individual conscience into democratic cover no federation could easily punish. The donated match fees completed the picture: protest as charity, dissent as virtue.
The FAI's role was equally calculated. Moving the home game to Serbia for "operational reasons", confirming the no-handshake protocol in advance, absorbing the media boycott — the federation built a firewall between protest and institution, letting players be political while it stayed technical. The games were played, the table unaffected, the only casualty a press conference. Whether the firewall holds if UEFA rules the protocol itself was the offence is the next test.
The deepest strategy belongs to Hallgrimsson's line — "we're playing against genocide" — which did what silent gestures couldn't: it named the thing. The handshake refusal was deniable; the word was not. That Israel's federation called it "stupid and ignorant" rather than engaging it says where the argument lives now: not on the pitch, where Ireland won 3-0 and drew 1-1, but in the language around it.
The most concrete knock-on effect is Euro 2028. Ireland co-hosts with England, Wales and Scotland — meaning the federation that tabled a motion to suspend Israel will stage UEFA's flagship event, possibly with Israel in the draw. Every protocol decision, from anthems to security, will now be read through Bačka Topola. The FAI bought two years of leverage and two years of exposure in a fortnight.
The second effect is on the players. Bazunu's withdrawal — "my personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong" — sets a bar teammates will be measured against for years, and the 14-8 vote puts eight of them on record as wanting to go further. Finn Azaz, the substitute whose mother has Israeli heritage, embodies the human complexity slogans flatten. Kelleher, handed the armband because O'Shea's wife was giving birth, will forever be the captain who wouldn't shake the hand.
On the pitch, the group moves on: Ireland third on five points, three behind Austria, Kosovo ahead on goal difference, Israel bottom on two. The remaining fixtures' sporting stakes are real but secondary; the table will be decided by football, the story by everything around it.
Off the pitch, three clocks tick: UEFA's disciplinary silence — how long Nyon can say nothing before the nothing becomes the story; the FAI's November motion to suspend Israel, still on the books; and Euro 2028, where Ireland the protester becomes Ireland the host. The handshake that never happened will be remembered then — as the moment football grew a conscience, or discovered it always had one.
Western coverage split on a familiar fault line: the right to protest versus the sanctity of sport. Much of the British and European press treated the stance with weary respect — the squad voted, the protest was peaceful, the football went ahead — while voices closer to Israel called it a humiliation ritual against a team with no say in its government's war. The Western anxiety is institutional: if players can vote on which opponents deserve a handshake, the fixture list becomes negotiable, and UEFA's authority frays one armband at a time.
From Moscow and Beijing, the episode reads as Western double standards made flesh. The Eastern framing notes pointedly that Russian teams remain banned from the same competitions while Israel plays on — and that an Irish squad protesting Gaza is a moral gesture while Russian athletes protesting exclusion are a security problem. In this telling, the handshake refusal isn't the scandal; the scandal is that it took a war of this scale for European football to admit its "neutrality" was always selective.
Across the Global South, Ireland's players have been received as heroes of a cause the South carried largely alone. Irish identification with Palestine — post-colonial solidarity from an island that remembers occupation — resonates from Johannesburg to Jakarta, and the squad's willingness to absorb pressure, donate fees and take the vote reads as proof that principle can survive inside the world's most commercialised sport. The Southern reading is unsentimental about UEFA: a body fast on Russia and slow on Israel isn't neutral but political.
The Irish players decided, as a squad, not to shake hands with the Israeli team before either Nations League game and to skip the customary pennant exchange, as a protest over Israel's war in Gaza. Captain Dara O'Shea first refused Israel captain Manor Solomon's hand before the 3-0 win in Debrecen; stand-in captain Caoimhin Kelleher repeated the gesture with Dor Peretz in Serbia..
The fixture was officially an Ireland home game but was moved from Dublin to a neutral venue in June for what the Football Association of Ireland called "operational reasons", following widespread calls in Ireland for a boycott over the Gaza war. It was played at Bačka Topola in Serbia with no fans present. Israel's designated home game had likewise been staged in Debrecen, Hungary, where all of Israel's home fixtures are being played.
Gavin Bazunu is Ireland's reserve goalkeeper. He was the only squad member to withdraw from both games against Israel, saying in a statement that it was his "personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong". His withdrawal came on the morning of the first game in Debrecen, after which the remaining players voted 14-8 to go ahead with the fixtures. He stayed with the squad and was available for the intervening match against Austria.
The 1-1 draw left Ireland third in Group B3 on five points, three behind leaders Austria with Kosovo second on goal difference; Israel sit bottom with two points. Beyond the table, the unresolved questions are disciplinary: whether UEFA acts over the protests and the confrontational press conferences, and how the episode affects Ireland's standing as a co-host of Euro 2028 alongside England, Wales and Scotland.
