Kneecap, The Mary Wallopers, Annie Mac and more back ‘Stop The Game’ campaign protesting Ireland v Israel game

Kneecap, The Mary Wallopers, Annie Mac and more are among those backing the ‘Stop The Game’ campaign protesting an upcoming Ireland v Israel football fixture.

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The campaign comes after public figures and football fans alike have argued that Ireland should boycott the UEFA Champions League match against Israel, which is set to take place at the Aviva Stadium on October 4.

In protest of the controversial match, many have reposted a video featuring footage from previous football matches spliced with clips of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, highlighting the human cost of the violence by showing clips of people pulled from rubble and hospitalised.

“In the last 30 months, Israel has killed 565 Palestinian footballers in Gaza,” the video reads. “Playing Israel is supporting Genocide.” In response to pressure from fans to boycott the fixture, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) CEO, David Courell, said that Ireland had “no choice” but to play, given the threat of sanctions from European football’s governing body, UEFA, and has said they are acting in the best interests of Irish football.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that he believes the game should go ahead, and urged people to separate the government of Israel from its people. Former Ireland manager Brian Kerr, however, recently told Virgin Media that separating football and politics was “baloney” and that this is an opportunity for the FAI to make a stance for the Palestinian people.

Similarly, Annie Mac shared a lengthy video discussing the fixture, telling her Instagram followers that “everything around the game is political, and you can’t separate the two”.

“Someone somewhere has to throw their pebble in the pond, and then the ripples happen,” she urged. “That’s what could happen here. Ireland could be exemplary in standing up and saying, ‘No, we will not take part in this competition against a country that is slaughtering humans in front of our very eyes with impunity, that spreads hate, that commits genocide.’

“It’s not anti-Semitic [to say],” she continued. “It’s not fucking unjust. It’s all right to look at that and say, ‘We don’t stand by that, as human beings, we don’t want to see this. We don’t believe in this, and our way of showing our discontent – our discomfort – with this is to say no, to pull out of this.”

“We cannot play the representatives of a state committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) wrote in a statement on Instagram.

It comes after the High Court dismissed a terror charge against Kneecap’s, Mo Chara, and later rejected an appeal by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Chara, real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, was charged with the offence for allegedly displaying the flag of Hezbollah – a proscribed terrorist organisation – and shouting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah,” during a gig in London back in 2024. The band, who have continuously denied supporting either Hamas or Hezbollah, argued that the footage from the gig had been taken out of context and described the legal action as a “carnival of distraction”.

The rapper also maintained that he didn’t know what the flag was when he picked it up, and the band invited fans to gather in support when they made three court appearances.

The decision to throw the charges out was reached in September and was made due to technicalities relating to the way in which the case was brought about. An appeal was then made by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in January, but was thrown out on March 11 after two high court judges stood by the initial decision.

The band recently spoke out about the controversy surrounding them and hit back at any accusations of being anti-Semitic.

“When you start labelling bands and people who speak out against Israel as anti-Semitic, what you do is water that term down,” he said, adding: “We are not anti-Semitic.”

Bandmate Móglaí Bap then chimed in and agreed, referring to their own roots. “Look, we’re from the north of Ireland. We know about fucking religious conflicts, people using religion as a way to murder, maim and all this stuff,” he told the outlet. “We have gone through that as a country and we want nothing to do with it.”

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