Sir, – Dr Peter Boylan’s letter (June 8th) relies on a familiar deflection, comparing Israel to isolated regimes like Iran or the Taliban to claim Ireland’s focus is unbalanced. This completely misses the reality of institutional leverage.
Regimes in Tehran or Kabul are already heavily sanctioned and globally isolated. Israel, by contrast, is actively armed, funded, and diplomatically shielded by western nations while enjoying full integration into European cultural and sporting bodies like Uefa. Holding a state to international law when it is directly subsidised and celebrated within our own economic and cultural sphere is not a double standard; it is the bare minimum of accountability.
Instead of hand-wringing over whether to allow these fixtures to go ahead, a state genuinely committed to the international rules-based order should enforce it. Representatives or vocal cheerleaders of a regime currently facing active International Criminal Court arrest warrants should be met with formal investigation under universal jurisdiction frameworks, and swiftly transferred to The Hague, rather than being accommodated on Irish soil.
An occupying power flattening civilian infrastructure and engineering mass starvation cannot hide behind the human rights abuses of autocracies elsewhere to escape scrutiny.
RM Block
A truly consistent moral framework means extending this isolation universally. We should be equally vocal in demanding cultural and athletic boycotts against the military junta in Myanmar for its atrocities, or the factions committing ethnic cleansing in Sudan. Applying these standards across the board ensures that no ruling power, either protected by western vetoes or operating as an isolated autocracy, is ever permitted to normalise human suffering on a football pitch. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS JOSEPH KENNY,
Gorey,
Wexford.
