140 Irish Pubs Refuse to Screen Ireland-Israel Match Over Gaza

At Peadar Browns pub in Dublin's Liberties district, the crowd was as thick as any match night on Sunday. The televisions, though, stayed dark. Owner Aidan Brown had made that call weeks earlier, before the Republic of Ireland's Nations League fixture against Israel even had a kickoff time. "We committed about a month ago not to show any of the upcoming Nations League fixtures until Ireland made a stand against Israel," Brown told Al Jazeera. "We didn't show the Kosovo game, and we've absolutely no intention of showing the Israel games."

Brown's pub was not alone. By his own count, at least 140 pubs and bars in Ireland and abroad joined the blackout, a tally he had been building for weeks and expected to keep climbing as kickoff approached.

How many pubs and fans are behind the boycott?

Brown's running list put the number of participating venues at 140 as of Sunday, spanning Ireland and locations abroad. He described the mood as comparable to one of the country's most talked-about sporting controversies. "I think this is just as big as Saipan and the Roy Keane saga in 2002," Brown said, referencing the dispute that sent Ireland's captain home from the World Cup after a clash with manager Mick McCarthy over training facilities.

The difference this time, Brown and others said, is that the argument is not about football conditions but about whether the fixture should be played at all.

By the numbers

• 140+ pubs in Ireland and abroad declined to screen the match, according to owner Aidan Brown's tally.
• 76% of Irish football supporters surveyed opposed the match going ahead, per a poll cited by Al Jazeera.
• 63% of respondents in a survey of Professional Footballers' Association members shared that opposition.

Why are pub owners refusing to show the game?

The refusals are tied explicitly to Israel's war in Gaza, which organizers describe as genocidal. In Derry, in the north of Ireland, Liam Doherty, owner of the Delacroix bar, framed the decision as a small-nation obligation. "It has to come from the bottom up, and it has to come from a small nation," Doherty said. "I think that we have to be the one that shows that this is just wrong."

Rebecca O'Keeffe, chair of Irish Sport for Palestine, which organized the Stop the Game campaign, said the past week has widened the boycott's reach well beyond its usual base.

"It's a mass movement. It's reached corners of Ireland that maybe wouldn't have been engaged with this issue before. It's all people can talk about. We are past the point of symbolic gestures and hollow words." — Rebecca O'Keeffe, chair, Irish Sport for Palestine

What happened inside the Ireland squad?

The protest movement collided with turmoil inside the national team itself. Goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu told teammates he did not want to play the fixture against Israel, according to Al Jazeera, a disclosure that added to the pressure surrounding the match and fed into the broader public debate over whether the game should have gone ahead at all.

Ireland has long been counted among the most consistently pro-Palestinian governments and publics in Western Europe, a posture that made the scheduling of two Nations League matches against Israel a flashpoint well before Sunday's kickoff.

What does Irish public opinion say?

Polling cited by Al Jazeera found opposition to the fixture was not universal but was broad. Seventy-six percent of Irish football supporters surveyed said they opposed the match going ahead. Among players, a survey of Professional Footballers' Association members found 63 percent held the same view, suggesting the discomfort extended from the terraces into the dressing room.

What comes next for the Ireland-Israel fixtures?

A second Nations League match between the two sides remains on the schedule, and organizers with Irish Sport for Palestine have signaled the Stop the Game campaign will continue pressing for that fixture to be scrapped or relocated rather than accept another round of pub blackouts as the extent of public protest. Brown said his own list of non-broadcasting venues would keep growing, calling the pub-by-pub refusals a a grassroots complement to the louder campaign for the Football Association of Ireland to act. Whether either federation moves before the next fixture is unresolved, and the size of Sunday's boycott suggests the pressure is not likely to ease.