Ireland, will apparently, still play Israel in Debrecen today, and the build-up has been about almost everything except football. In the space of a few weeks Macklemore, Gavin Bazunu and Brian Kerr have all landed on the right side of history, and it’s easy to get caught up in the social discourse and forget why we’re having these discussions in the first place.
Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine, and somehow the national conversation has ended up on handshakes and captains exchanging small flags before a Nations League match. It’s a wild scenario to be in. The thing that deserves our attention is a documentary called NAZA, in which 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers describe how AI-assisted targeting worked in Gaza and how expected civilian deaths were weighed before airstrikes. It’s in cinemas now and will stream for free on The Guardian’s website from late November.
That’s the story. The match is the distraction, and I’ll explain why below.
A week of handshakes and hypotheticals
The squad voted yesterday to fulfil the fixture after a four-hour meeting. There will be no pre-match handshake and no exchange of pennants, and the players will wear black armbands in recognition of all the lives lost. Honestly, a farsical outcomes where, after UEFA inaction, the FAI didn’t act and now pushes even more pressure on the players Goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu withdrew, saying that as a man of faith and principle it would be wrong for him to take part. Former Ireland manager Brian Kerr said the FAI had lost the respect of the Irish people by going ahead. Macklemore, dropped from Ed Sheeran’s US tour after chanting “Free Palestine”, is bringing a Free Palestine tour to Dublin’s 3Arena on 26 October, with proceeds going to organisations supporting Palestinians.
Each of them chose a side knowing it would cost them something. I’d wager that in years to come we’ll look back and say they were strong leaders doing the right thing.
Then came the press conference. Heimir Hallgrímsson was left alone to field questions from Israeli media, including one about Ireland playing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. To hear that comparison raised at all, let alone by an Israeli journalist, honestly blew my mind.
Why the antisemitism charge doesn’t hold up
I’ll keep this brief, because this piece isn’t about me. Long before I wrote about tech, I learned how to research and write by studying history in college. My undergraduate work focused on Holocaust denial and the undeniable persecution of Europe’s Jewish population during the Second World War, alongside the often forgotten disabled people, gay people, and Roma and Sinti communities who were also targeted by Hitler’s forces.
That history matters to me, which is exactly why hearing Ireland described as antisemitic is off the wall. Jewish people and the Israeli government or IDF are not the same thing, and criticising what’s happening in Gaza is not a denial of what happened in Europe. Treating them as one and the same does a disservice to both.
What is the NAZA documentary about?
NAZA is a documentary built on testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, filmed secretly at night on Tel Aviv rooftops with their identities masked, who describe the systems behind the killing of civilians in Gaza. The title comes from the Hebrew military shorthand for collateral damage, the number of civilians expected to be killed in a strike.
It’s directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land, and builds on Abraham’s reporting for +972 Magazine and Local Call. The Guardian produced it, and Jonathan Glazer is an executive producer. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 10 September, received a standing ovation of around 25 minutes that’s been reported as a festival record, and won the Special Jury Prize.
The Israeli military has denied the film’s main claims with Israel’s culture minister accused the directors of treason and called for their citizenship to be revoked, and Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged a law to strip citizenship from anyone who defames Israeli soldiers. Israel also rejects the genocide charge outright. That said, it’s no longer a fringe position. Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières both say Israel is committing genocide, and a UN commission of inquiry reached the same conclusion last year.
When can you watch NAZA for free?
From late November, on The Guardian’s website, free to anyone in the world with no time limit. Before that, the film is getting a cinema release across 56 countries and territories from 28 September, though not in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza. The filmmakers have offered it to Israeli cinemas free of charge, and The Guardian says it’s looking at other ways to get it seen in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Historians of the Holocaust have spent decades asking what ordinary Germans knew and why they didn’t do more. It’s a question that belongs to every atrocity rather than one nation, and it’s fair to turn it on ourselves. What about the ordinary Irish? From the online discourse this week, most people seem very aware of what’s going on.
That awareness cuts both ways. History will point to films like NAZA as evidence that what was happening was no secret, and that the world still didn’t do enough to stop it. It’s even harder to plead ignorance when that evidence is streaming for free.
Where this leaves us
The match will likely be played, the handshake won’t happen, and the conversation will roll on to the return fixture in Serbia next weekend. All of it is sportswashing and distraction, and it’s working, because it’s taking our eyes off the real atrocities. A new history is being written right now, and the people who will come out of it well are the ones who looked at the evidence and refused to look away. Watch the film.
NAZA is in cinemas now and streams free worldwide on theguardian.com from late November. I implore you to watch it.
