Ciarán Murphy: GAA should not be cowards and must cut ties with Allianz over Gaza

I rather foolishly agreed to do a bit of coaching with two Gaelic football teams this year – one in west Waterford and one in Dublin. It kept me going, let’s say. And countless times, it kept me off the streets when Irish people were trying to make clear their opposition to the continuing slaughter of innocents in Gaza. If I missed marches in support of Palestine, more often than not I was able to blame the GAA. I was out of town. I was “too busy”.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, released a report in June this year that named the asset management firm Pimco as one of a number of firms that had purchased Israeli treasury bonds. Pimco is owned by Allianz.

These bonds play a “critical role in funding the ongoing assault on Gaza”, according to the report, which states that Pimco had bought almost $1 billion (€860 million) worth. The report urged corporate entities to “promptly cease all business activities and terminate relationships directly linked with, contributing to and causing human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people, in accordance with international corporate responsibilities and the law of self-determination”.

Allianz sponsors the GAA senior football championship, the national leagues, the Camogie Association and Cumann na mBunscol. In August an open letter was delivered to Croke Park, calling on the association to cease its relationship with Allianz. The letter was signed by about 800 current and former players.

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Last month, a motion from the Ferbane club asking the GAA to cut ties with Allianz was passed by the Offaly county board. Last Friday, the Down county board joined Tyrone and Fermanagh in supporting that Offaly motion. The depth of feeling in Irish public life about the situation in Gaza is obvious. The FAI’s agm also made that abundantly clear. The GAA’s ethics and integrity committee have been asked to investigate the sponsorship, and they will report to Central Council this weekend.

Sponsorship at the highest level of the GAA is not an act of charity. We can commend Allianz for their long support of the national leagues, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’ve got nothing in return. The GAA allows massive companies to tie itself to the largest community-based organisation in the country. The GAA is not beholden to them. If sport sponsorships didn’t work for both parties, it wouldn’t bring in a fraction of the revenues that it does.

Why should the GAA hold itself to a higher standard? Because it can. You are responsible only for your own actions. The fact that 82 cent of every euro the GAA receives goes back into the clubs gives us all a stake in where that money comes from.

The GAA said nothing about Kingspan’s sponsorship of Cavan after that company was heavily criticised in the Grenfell Tower report, but it banned gambling sponsorship and ended its long-standing deal with Guinness long before alcohol sponsorship was banned by the government.

If it doesn’t think businesses align with what it believes to be right in society, it has the ability to cut ties. It has not waited to be told what to do by government. Rightly or wrongly, it makes a decision based on its own morals and ethics. And the GAA isn’t being pushed to end Allianz’s sponsorship by outside forces – its own members are asking it to do it.

It signed a contract with Allianz – who have responded to the petition by saying their “business decisions are guided by strict legal standards and world-leading ESG principles” – earlier this year. It’s a deal that will run for five years. It is far from simple to extricate oneself from such a contract. But extricate itself it must. It’s complicated, of course. But saying “it’s complicated” is the coward’s way. You have to be able to stand up and justify your decision to yourself. Your decision to march, or not. Your decision to contact your local representative, or not.

If the GAA thought that a ceasefire being announced would relieve the pressure on their relationship with Allianz, Israel’s actions have given it scant cover. According to Gaza’s health ministry, since the “ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip took effect on October 10th Israeli forces have killed at least 345 Palestinians, including at least 119 children, and wounded at least 889 (those were the figures on Tuesday, and nothing that has happened in the last month would suggest that it wouldn’t be more by this morning). There is a choice to be made.

Worse than missing marches, or making my feelings known to a public representative, or writing columns, by the end of this summer I began to think that protesting was as much for the protesters as it was for the people of Gaza. In the face of so much global apathy, was it just an attempt to help themselves sleep at night that brought people out weekend after weekend?

When the Central Bank announced on September 1st that it would no longer facilitate the selling of Israeli war bonds in Ireland, it became clear the protests had worked. Every person that stood on a bridge, waving a Palestinian flag in the pouring rain for two winters, saying nothing more than that “these things may happen regardless, but it won’t happen in my name”. It wasn’t Binyamin Netanyahu standing in front of the International Criminal Court, but it was a win. That shamed me then, and it shames me still. It is incredibly difficult to make your voice heard. The GAA, the association I’m proud to call myself a member of, can take a stand. It should.