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Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so.
TAIPEI (JTA) — When the Season 3 plot twist of “Attack on Titan” aired in 2019, viewers wasted no time in jumping online to discuss what they saw.
In the world of “Attack on Titan” — an extremely popular Japanese anime series now in its final season, which started in March and does not have a known end date — humanity has been trapped within a walled city on the island of Paradis, surrounded by Titans, grotesque giants who mindlessly eat any person who gets in their way.
In the third season, the Titans’ origins are revealed as a group called the Eldians, a group that made a deal with the devil to gain Titan powers with which they subjugated humanity for years. A group called the Marleyans later overthrew the Eldian empire and forced them into ghettoes, forcing them to wear armbands that identified their race with a symbol similar to the Star of David. Political prisoners were injected with a serum that turns them into the terrifying Titans.
The implications that a race meant to represent Jews had made “a deal with the devil” to achieve power were too much for some to bear. Fans debated the meaning on Twitter and Reddit as think pieces pointed to the show’s “fascist subtext” and possible antisemitism as ratings and viewership climbed. Some viewers defended the series as a condemnation of those ideas and a meditation on moral ambiguity, but others said the plot’s condemnation of fascism was too weak. The New Republic in 2020 called “Attack on Titan” “the alt-right’s favorite manga.”
Either way, in November 2021, the show’s production team announced it would cancel the sale of Eldian armbands — the ones Eldians were forced to wear in their ghettos — explaining that it was “an act without consideration to easily commercialize what was drawn as a symbol of racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination in the work.”
“Attack on Titan” is only the latest manga (a specific type of Japanese comic books or graphic novels) or anime (TV shows or movies animated in the manga style) series on the chopping block. As it continues to gain popularity outside of Japan’s borders, the Japanese animation medium as a whole has been hit with criticism for alleged glorification of antisemitism, fascism and militarism. The debate has been fueled by a stream of examples: the literal evil Jewish cabal in “Angel Cop,” (references to Jews were later removed in the English-language dubbed version), the Fuhrer villain in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” the Nazi occultism (in which Nazis channel the occult to carry out duties or crimes) in “Hellboy,” and the Nazi characters in “Hellsing” and “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” to name a few.
Western viewers are not the only ones taking issue. Fans of “Attack on Titan” in South Korea — which was subject to Japanese war atrocities during World War II that Japan continues to deny — have taken issue, too. Revelations from Hajime Isayama, the creator of the original “Attack on Titan” manga, that a character in the series was inspired by an Imperial Japanese army general who had committed war crimes against Koreans were met with heated discussion and later death threats from Korean fans online. Some also pointed to a private Twitter account believed to be run by Isayama that denies imperial Japan’s war atrocities.
“Ridiculous the lengths a fandom will go to downplay the blatant antisemitism in a series and protect and lie about the creator of said series,” wrote one Twitter user. “[Y]ou doing this and ignoring koreans and jewish people says a lot.”
These themes are so common in manga and anime that some independent researchers like Haru Mena (a pen name) have begun creating classifications for the many Nazi tropes that make regular appearances. Mena, a military researcher who lectures annually at the Anime Boston convention about World War II and Nazi imagery in anime and manga, says the phenomenon is a result of how Japan remembers its role in World War II — not as the aggressor, but as a victim of war.
“Japan does not want to be the bad guy. They love to have other people be the bad guy,” he said. “That’s why they’re using all these Nazi characters. We all agree Nazis are bad, war crimes are bad, no decent self-respecting nation would ever do [what they did].”
But many Jewish anime fans, like Reddit user Desiree (who did not offer her last name for privacy reasons), have taken issue with the way some anime and manga series portray Nazis while reducing the Holocaust to narrative devices.
“I think that most people who are telling these stories aren’t coming from an area where this would be as personally familiar,” she said. “There’s almost no resonance to it. Because they take away all these details they make it a big trope.”
hi
anime and manga have an antisemitism problem
good day
— Kay (he/they, she for friends only) (@Cayliana) February 19, 2022
East Asian interest in Nazi imagery has also bled over into the West in the form of news headlines in recent years — involving everything from Nazi-themed bars and parades to Nazi cosplay in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea.
But some experts say that repeated references to Nazi villains and World War II in manga and anime have more to do with Japanese history and culture than with antisemitism.
“There is a fascination with Nazism in Japan to some degree or another,” said Raz Greenberg, an Israel-based writer whose Ph.D. research examined Jewish influence on Japan’s “God of Comics,” Osamu Tezuka, an artist sometimes referred to as Japan’s equivalent to Walt Disney. In 1983, Tezuka released the first in a five-volume series called “Adolf,” a popular manga set in World War II-era Japan and Germany about three men with that name — a Japanese boy, a Jewish boy and Hitler.
“I think there’s something fascinating about Nazi aesthetic, certainly for countries that never actually participated in the war against the Nazis. But I don’t think it’s that different from, say, the way George Lucas made the Empire in the ‘Star Wars’ films very Nazi-like in its aesthetic,” Greenberg said.
As Greenberg notes, Western media is also full of Holocaust references — some more successful in its repudiation of Nazi ideology than others — like the numbered tattoos and recent use of a Lithuanian prison camp as a filming location in the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things.”
“What makes people angry is, people think when the Japanese approach it, they approach it without understanding. And it’s easier to think that they don’t understand it when you look at a show like ‘Attack on Titan,’” Greenberg said.
Liron Afriat, a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Asian Sphere program and the founder of the Anime and Manga Association of Israel, said while shows like “Attack on Titan” reference the Holocaust and use World War II-era imagery, it’s likely that Western viewers are misinterpreting its intended parallels to Japanese politics. … particularly Japan’s past of aggressive and corrupt militarism and late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to reinstate a non-defensive military.
“Western people are very eager to jump to conclusions when it comes to Asian media. This is something I see a lot in my work and it’s very frustrating,” she said. “There is a sense that because Japanese pop culture is so popular nowadays, it’s very easy to kind of dogpile on it and say it’s racist.”
In recent decades, anime series have been watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the medium has gone from being seen in the West as a geeky niche genre to a mainstream phenomenon. Though show creators may be conscious about their references, some fans say the fascist and Jewish references, especially the more clear-cut ones — like the Jewish conspiracy in “Angel Cop” — have real-life consequences.
Many in the anime fan community today remember a 2010 incident at Anime Boston when a group of cosplayers dressed up as characters from “Hetalia: Axis Powers,” a series that anthropomorphized Axis and Ally countries, was photographed making Nazi salutes just around the corner from the city’s Holocaust memorial.
“It used to be like, I can go to an anime convention and they would be selling uniforms that were clearly meant to be Nazi uniforms, but sans the swastika,” Desiree said. “And then over time, I noticed conventions started banning that kind of thing.”
“JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” features a Nazi character named Rudol von Stroheim. (Screenshot from YouTube)
Noah Oskow is the managing editor of the digital magazine Unseen Japan and a Jew who has lived in Japan for seven years. He recalled similar experiences at U.S. anime conventions.
“I think that it is problematic to portray Nazis and the Holocaust in the very frivolous way that it’s often portrayed,” he said. “Even in a place that is so far removed from Japan, that aesthetic of Nazis from manga or anime was seeping into somebody’s choices in a far-removed anime and manga event.”
Oskow says recent portrayals of Nazis and fascism in anime and manga lack the depth necessary to confront an issue like the Holocaust, but that some subtext in shows like “Attack on Titan” is likely missed by Western viewers since it is created for a Japanese audience.
Still, he says, as a Jew, there is a discomfort with these depictions, and the problems with simplifying themes like fascism and genocide should not be ignored just because the product came from Japan — particularly as stereotypes about Jews as having outsize influence remain common. In Japan, as in other East Asian nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, books and classes on how to become as smart and wealthy as Jews — believed to be among the most powerful people in media and finance — are not uncommon.
“In my years of discussing Jews with Japanese people…they really think of Jews as an ancient historical people or the people who were killed in the Holocaust unless they have some sort of conspiratorial idea. But most people have no conception of Jewish people,” Oskow said. “So when they’re portraying Jews in manga or anime or any sort of media, and when readers or viewers are engaging with that media, I just don’t think there’s this thought of how a Jewish person would perceive how they’re being portrayed.”
Jessica, a 29-year-old Jewish and Chinese anime fan from Vancouver who also requested her last name be left out of this article, said she deliberately chooses not to watch shows such as “Attack on Titan” and “Hetalia” because she finds the discussions about them among fans to be unproductive and frustrating. Desiree echoed Jessica’s experience of being ignored when raising the topic of antisemitism within the medium or within the fan community on platforms such as Reddit.
“I saw the reactions of other Jewish fans and, more importantly, saw the reaction of the goyish fans — the way ‘Hetalia’ fans did the sieg heil in front of a Holocaust memorial, the way that [‘Attack on Titan’] fans would swarm concerned Jewish fans in droves to tell them that they should perish in an oven, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with anime that attracted that sort of fanbase,” Desiree said.
“Attack on Titan” returned to streaming services on March 4 with the first part of its final season. In the first episode, the protagonist Eren, whom audiences have followed for a decade, begins carrying out a global genocide known as “the rumbling” with the end goal of destroying all Titans for good and bringing peace. The end result is a wipeout of 80% of humanity, an act that Eren believes was the only path to freedom. He thinks humans must all suffer as a consequence of being born into the world — a nihilistic philosophy that can be found among the manifestos of school shooters and incels.
In the original manga series, Eren’s supporters on the island militarize in order to defend Eren’s violent act, chanting a slogan: “If you can fight you win, if you cannot fight you lose! Fight, fight!” The ending was seen as morally ambiguous and was not popular with fans, who mostly refuted it due to poor writing. Many hope that the anime series will go a different route in its final episodes, which have not yet been released or given future release dates.
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Evan Gershkovich’s prison memoir begins with a Soviet Jewish exodus
A few days after Russian security agents arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on a trip in March 2023, his lawyers showed him a slip of paper with messages from home. He was being held alone, in what Russian prisons call “quarantine:” two weeks without a cellmate before joining the general population. His eyes went straight to the note from his mother.
Soon he would start getting kosher food, Ella Milman wrote, and then added: “If you come home with sidelocks, I’ll understand.”
It was a joke, and a very Jewish one. Gershkovich grew up in a secular family of Soviet émigrés, where being Jewish had more to do with family history and dark humor than with religious practice. His mother was ribbing him that a few weeks of kosher prison food might send him home looking like a yeshiva boy.
Sitting across from the investigator building his espionage case, Gershkovich grinned. His mother, he realized, still had her sense of humor, and that was exactly what he needed.
The kosher food wasn’t a joke. That night, with Passover days away, a local rabbi sent him stacks of matzo.
The scene appears in This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-American Story, Gershkovich’s memoir of his arrest, his 16 months behind bars and his release in the most elaborate U.S.-Russia prisoner swap since the Cold War. The book was published Tuesday.
Most of the coverage is about the prison. But Jewish history runs through the book from its first pages. Gershkovich’s great-grandfather was arrested during Stalin’s purges and vanished. His mother was laughed out of a journalism school application once the clerk saw her passport. And when he moved to Moscow as a young reporter, a Russian coworker needled him with an old stereotype about Jews and money.
The family that left
Gershkovich was born in New Jersey in 1991, two months before the Soviet Union fell apart. His parents had come over in 1979. Thousands of Soviet Jews were leaving at the time, helped by a U.S. law that linked trade with Moscow to whether its citizens were allowed to emigrate.
His mother flew out of Leningrad with her mother and ended up in Detroit. His father’s family came from Odessa and settled in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn neighborhood people call Little Odessa. In those years, his father later joked, Soviet Jews who ran into each other on the street skipped the hellos and just asked where the other was going.
For his father’s side, the decision was easy. Gershkovich’s great-grandfather was arrested in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s purges, and never seen again. His grandfather Mark spent years moving from city to city, afraid of being targeted next, and later dreaded the day his own son would be drafted into the Soviet army.
A Jew on paper
Gershkovich’s mother, Ella, was born in 1957, a few years after the “doctors’ plot,” a Stalin-era campaign that accused Jewish physicians of conspiring to kill Soviet leaders. One of the doctors caught up in it had been a neighbor in her family’s communal apartment.
Her father had wanted to name her Etya, after his late sister. Worried that an obviously Jewish name would draw attention, her mother pushed for Ella instead. It didn’t matter. The family name Milman gave her away, and Soviet passports listed each citizen’s ethnicity. Hers said “Jew.”
Ella dreamed of becoming a writer. When she applied to the journalism department at Leningrad State University, the woman taking her application glanced at her passport and laughed. She studied shipbuilding instead, listened to the Rolling Stones, and heard rumors that the Kremlin planned to deport Jews to Birobidzhan, a remote Soviet region near the Chinese border that had apparently been set up as a Jewish homeland.
When she finally emigrated to America at 22, she sewed a pair of gold earrings from her late father into her skirt’s waistband to get them past customs. Once the plane took off, she couldn’t stop laughing and crying.
A generation later, her son became the journalist she wasn’t allowed to be, and then a prisoner of the state that had turned her away.
Ella and her husand settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where Gershkovich and his sister spent Saturday mornings with a Russian tutor, and holidays meant trips to the Russian groceries and Uzbek grills of Brighton Beach. Gershkovich came to think of himself as Jewish-Russian-American. Russia’s war in Ukraine later forced him to ask why that label had never included Ukraine, given that his father’s family came from Odessa.
The empty chair
In 2017, Gershkovich moved to Moscow to report for The Moscow Times. On one of his first days, he asked a colleague when staff got paid. She laughed and told him his Odessan roots were showing, a jab about Jews and money that served as his introduction to Russian workplace culture.
On a later trip to Odessa, he visited a Jewish museum that displayed a 1953 Soviet propaganda article from the doctors’ plot era. It claimed that the Joint, the New York-based Jewish relief organization, was a front for American intelligence. Gershkovich recalls thinking that Moscow was getting paranoid again, while hoping things hadn’t gotten that bad. A few years later, Russia accused him of spying for the United States.
Gershkovich’s arrest came a week before Passover. That spring, many American Jews left an empty seat for him at their Seders, and activists later sent him letters for Rosh Hashanah. Both gestures deliberately echoed the movement to free Soviet Jewry, the same campaign that had helped free his parents. Natan Sharansky, the most famous Soviet Jewish dissident, who was himself released in a 1986 prisoner swap, advocated publicly for his release.
In July 2024, two weeks after a Russian court sentenced Gershkovich to 16 years in a maximum-security prison, he was freed in a prisoner exchange in Ankara, Turkey. Jewish groups celebrated, and the Orthodox Union posted the traditional blessing thanking God for freeing captives.
His great-grandfather was taken in 1937 and never came home. Eighty-seven years later, his great-grandson did.
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More Michigan Jews sign a petition pressuring El-Sayed on Israel. Will it matter?
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – The activists on the Zoom supporting Abdul El-Sayed knew they faced an uphill climb when it came to persuading their fellow Jewish Democrats to overcome their concerns about the Michigan Senate candidate and vote for their party’s nominee despite his strong disapproval of Israel.
Two progressive Jews, former Biden administration appointee Sam Bagenstos and Detroit Jews for Justice co-founder Hayley Sakwa, made the Jewish case for the candidate to a sometimes skeptical, sometimes combative crowd of around 30 people on Sunday night.
Sakwa and Bagenstos urged voters to prioritize the chance to put a check on the larger Trump agenda – including heavy immigration crackdowns and the rightward tilt of the federal judiciary – given that the Michigan seat could help determine who controls the legislative chamber.
But their appeal wasn’t enough for several of the people on the call, who less than two days later would sign on to the “Nonnegotiables” petition. Spearheaded by a group of Michigan Jewish clergy, the open letter calls for El-Sayed to moderate his views on Israel and affirm more vocal support for Jews in politics as a condition for earning their votes.
The 17 new names to the petition, shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of their release on Tuesday morning, include state Rep. Noah Arbit, the founder of the Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus.
Arbit recently gave a speech denouncing antisemitism on the floor of the Michigan House and has been critical of El-Sayed publicly: After progressive Jews recently hosted the candidate for a Rosh Hashanah dinner at their house, the representative accused them of “tokenism.” (Arbit declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.)
Other new names on the list include an elected University of Michigan regent and prominent local attorney, as well as several board members of the Jewish Democratic caucus, which itself is not endorsing a candidate in the race.
Concerns raised on the Sunday night Zoom call included El-Sayed’s opposition to Iron Dome funding for Israel and his earlier campaigning with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker, whom he has since distanced himself from. Some said they were worried he could open a door to a more hostile Democratic Party for Jews.
“With Abdul it sort of feels like letting a fox into the henhouse,” one said.
“I refuse to be anyone’s dhimmi,” another wrote in the chat, referring to a term for non-Muslims living under Islamic rule.
Yet any pressure Jewish Democratic critics of El-Sayed hope to place on the candidate are partly balanced out by the work of those such as Sakwa, who along with other Jewish liberals has to date secured 900 signatures pledging to vote for El-Sayed. A competing letter of Jewish voters pledging to back his Republican challenger, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, has picked up 524.
At the same time, the broader Democratic Party has ramped up its efforts to get elected officials in line behind the nominee. The El-Sayed campaign has yet to respond publicly to the “Nonnegotiables,” and with little more than a month to go before Election Day, it might not need to.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with El-Sayed last week in Detroit, and the liberal-leaning editorial board of the Detroit Free Press, the state’s largest daily newspaper, endorsed the former county health director over the weekend.
The Free Press wrote that its own endorsement was against an “extremist” — referring to Rogers and President Donald Trump — in language that one bloc of Jewish voters also used to refer to their own decision to vote for Rogers over El-Sayed.
In addition, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish and has fiercely criticized El-Sayed for his past comments about Jews and Israel, endorsed and appeared with the candidate on a local liberal podcast hosted by a Jewish woman to project unity.
“There is no choice,” Nessel said.
But the conversation demonstrated that tensions still remain even with many Jewish Democrats who have thrown in their lot with El-Sayed.
“Is there space for a Jewish Zionist like myself?” she asked him. “Is there space for us in the big tent of the Democratic Party?”
“I believe in a big tent,” he answered. “I am committed to having a tent where we march in lock step on the 95% of issues that we agree on.”
But the attorney general, who cited the risk of antisemitic threats as the reason she skipped the party convention earlier this year, wasn’t done.
“The question many of us have is: Are you seeking our votes?” Nessel asked El-Sayed. “Do they matter to you?”
“Yes,” the candidate responded. “If you trust that I’ll lead well for the community, even if there’s an issue on which we deeply disagree, then I hope I can earn your vote.” Later, El-Sayed said, “I look forward to working” on the Jewish American Security Act, a bipartisan bill to institute new Jewish security measures, including in synagogues and on college campuses.
“We’ve had an uptick in antisemitism, and it is critical to protect Jewish Americans,” El-Sayed said.
As with Nessel, El-Sayed’s candidacy is pushing other Jewish Democrats to perform a difficult two-step: pushing for the party platform and against Trump, without getting too close to the candidate himself.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America, whose CEO, Halie Soifer, is a Michigan native, is also not endorsing in the race. Yet Soifer told JTA, “Jewish voters will support Democrats in large numbers in the midterms, including in Michigan.” She predicted that Rogers wouldn’t earn more than one-quarter of the Jewish vote.
“Jewish voters recognize that a vote for any Republican in 2026 is a vote for Donald Trump,” Soifer told JTA over text. “We know Jewish voters are a critical component of a winning Democratic coalition.”
Decky Alexander, who chairs the Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus, pointed to consistently high Democratic voting records for Jews in arguing that Jews still matter to the party’s coalition. She also favorably noted the Democratic National Committee’s recent announcement that it would establish a “Jewish American Council,” to convene in 2027.
“We can’t be distilled down to one vote or one idea,” Alexander told JTA.
One part of the state’s Jewish Democratic bloc unlikely to support El-Sayed: members of Temple Israel, the country’s largest Reform congregation. Speaking to the national publication The Free Press last week, several members, including a preschool teacher who was in the building when it was attacked in March, said El-Sayed’s apology for his earlier remarks about the temple was insufficient and that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him.
“No thinking Jew could vote for Abdul El-Sayed,” a former temple president told The Free Press.
None of the synagogue’s clergy signed the “Nonnegotiables” letter, or any other Jewish letter circulating about El-Sayed. But one of the temple’s rabbis told congregants in a Kol Nidre sermon that they had a say in drafting it, stating, “Our full participation in American political life is also non-negotiable.”
“No one should have to pass a test about Israel to be welcomed into a coalition on a campus or in a political party,” Rabbi Josh Bennett told his congregation, which had convened in the Temple Israel building for the High Holidays for the first time since the March attack. Rabbi Jen Lader, also of Temple Israel, recently testified before Congress to advocate for the Jewish American Security Act.
As Rogers has looked to win over dissatisfied Jews to his campaign, he has also moved toward El-Sayed on at least one issue tangentially related to Israel: opposition to the war in Iran. Initially a supporter of the war, Rogers in recent days has said he thinks it should “end quickly.”
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has raised eyebrows of his own in recent days. He dithered on denouncing the Iranian regime when urged to by an Iranian Christian college student, and appeared at a Dearborn fundraiser with Osama Siblani, a local Arab-American activist and newspaper publisher who once stated at a rally, “We are not going to be intimidated by staying silent when they say Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
The “Nonnegotiables” petition was launched earlier this month by a group of more than a dozen Michigan Jewish clergy after a series of apologies by El-Sayed to Jewish audiences for past comments he had made about the Temple Israel attack. The candidate needs to do more to earn the community’s confidence, the campaign’s organizers have told JTA.
“A large number of Jews haven’t decided how they will vote,” David Kramer, the caucus’s vice chair and one of the new signers, told JTA about the letter’s potential influence. “I speak to these people every day. Regardless of how they vote, Michigan Jews want and deserve to feel safe and have a seat at the table.”
As the Zoom call wrapped, some of the assembled Jews said they would vote for El-Sayed, even if reluctantly. Alexander of the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, who signed the letter supporting him, told the crowd the candidate has nothing to hide, even if they don’t like what he says.
“He’s basically stated what he believes,” she said. “And you have to decide if that’s the word for you.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Irish national soccer team won’t shake hands with Israel after win
(JTA) — It only took 25 minutes of play for the Irish national soccer team to build a 3-0 lead over Israel in the countries’ UEFA Nations League B match on Sunday. But there were decades of bad blood that preceded Ireland’s shutout victory in a game dominated more by the geopolitics of the Gaza war than about sports. One soccer writer described it as “arguably one of the most contentious football matches of this century.”
At the match, held in a mostly empty stadium in the neutral site of Debrecen, Hungary, the Irish players wore black armbands and bowed their heads in protest during the Israeli national anthem. There were no pre- or postgame handshakes, and one Irish player declined to participate altogether, citing his “personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong.”
Ireland’s soccer federation did not reserve tickets for its fans, and the country’s public broadcaster scaled back its coverage of the game. The teams are set to meet again on Oct. 4 in Serbia, this time with Ireland as the “home” team.
Ireland and Israel have a long history of icy relations. Ireland became the first member of the European Union to call for an independent Palestinian country in 1980, and was among the first of the Western European countries to recognize an official Palestinian state in 2024. Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin has rejected claims that his country’s sharp criticism of Israel bleeds into antisemitism.
In the months leading up to Sunday’s match, Ireland’s football governing body faced intense pressure to boycott the match. At a meeting in July, the Football Association of Ireland voted 75-32, with three abstentions, in favor of proceeding with the match, “while acknowledging the strength of feeling regarding support for Palestine.” The motion also noted that a boycott would come with UEFA sanctions, both financial and competitive: In League B matches, mid-tier nations seek to advance to the top division and boost their chances of qualifying for the quadrennial World Cup tournament. The Irish team itself also held a last-minute vote over whether to participate.
Earlier this month, more than 160 Irish athletes and sports figures signed an open letter calling on the national team to pull out of the match. The signatories included former Irish national team head coach Brian Kerr — who had led Ireland to a 2-2 draw against Israel in a 2005 match in Dublin that also took place amid protests.
Former Irish national team star Kevin Kilbane also authored a column in The Irish Times, writing, “Ireland should not play Israel. Not in Dublin, not in Hungary, not in Serbia. Not when Israel is committing genocide.” Israel denies the charge of genocide.
There were also a number of public barbs exchanged between leaders of the two countries and their football associations.
At a press conference last week, Irish coach Heimir Hallgrímsson replied to questions about the match by saying, “We are not playing with genocide, we are playing against genocide. We are playing against Israel; we are not playing with Israel.”
Israel’s football association responded to that comment with a post on X, writing, “We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by the @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity. We’re playing against the coach who embodies them.”
That drew a rebuke from Martin, who told reporters, “They are unacceptable remarks and should be withdrawn.”
And on Sunday, the morning of the match, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar posted a lengthy tweet referencing the 1939 Irish squad that gave a Nazi salute before a game against the German national team.
“Almost 90 years have passed. Ireland’s unique talent for finding itself on the wrong side of history remains intact,” Sa’ar wrote. “Back then, they gave the Nazi salute. This time, they stand on the side of Palestinian terrorism. Above the black armbands the Irish players will wear tonight flies the black flag of jihadism.”
After the match, Israeli captain Manor Solomon said the Irish players who bowed their heads during the Israeli anthem “don’t interest me.”
“We have a country 10 times better than theirs, stronger, an amazing country with amazing people,” said Solomon, who plays in the English Championship league. “We are proud to wear the team shirt and to be Israelis. We are proud of our state and of our soldiers. [The Irish] can play all their tricks. We are Israelis and love the country. And that will always be the case.”
The post Irish national soccer team won’t shake hands with Israel after win appeared first on The Forward.
