I rise briefly today to raise the issue of the Irish basketball team travelling today and playing the team from Israel. I listened this morning with interest to Mr. Kieran Donaghy, the former great Kerry footballer who, unfortunately, broke our hearts on a few occasions. The point he made was that the team should not go; they should not play. I would endorse that position because what is happening here is that this team of basketball players are being taunted and abused by people in Israel before the game starts and that puts them in an impossible position. They say they will lose approximately €80,000 in revenue and that their standing in European basketball will be downgraded. Mr. Donaghy made a interesting point that if they started a GoFundMe set-up for this situation they would not be long recouping the €80,000, but sometimes we must take a stance on these issues. Our country, under the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Micheál Martin, has been very vocal and taking an important and strong stance on the situation in Israel. There is a genocide in Gaza. Call it what you like, that is what is going on. Appalling incidents are being imposed on the poor Gazans by Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the problem. Straight out, he is the problem with some of his right-wing cohorts. Netanyahu would be out of office and kicked and booted out except this is prolonging his position as Prime Minister of Israel. Internationally, Israel is getting a bad name, and rightly so. I cannot understand why the US President, Mr. Joe Biden, whom I would have great respect for, is not calling it out plain and simple if a stop is not put to this. They want to destroy and dismantle Hamas. Hamas is an ideology.

They can kill all they want in Gaza but instead of destroying Hamas they are actually throwing petrol on the fire because all throughout that Middle East region, whether it is Iran, Egypt, the West Bank, Lebanon, etc, instead of having 100,000 Hamas rebels, every day that passes that number multiplies and the Israelis, the younger generation and others, will regret what is happening now because this is not going to die away. We have experience in our country of trying to suppress an organisation who tried to uphold what they felt was the right way forward and, eventually, all parties came to the table to talk and got a solution. Israelis, under Netanyahu, dismissed outright the peace talks that were suggested recently. In fact, yesterday he poured cold water on the suggestion and I think we should call that out in this House.

I am a great supporter of the Irish basketball team going and playing but already, before they start, they are hampered by the negative comments and intimidation by Israel, which is most regrettable. I am not antisemitic but we cannot ignore the situation in Gaza. In the short term Netanyahu might have some success but in the long term the people of Israel will suffer.

Well said.

I want to raise the same issue. What I want to say is not a political commentary on what has happened but to say that sports and politics do not mix. What is really unfortunate about this situation is that individual players who only want to play the game and do their best to represent Ireland are now being put at the centre of a political controversy. They do not deserve that.

What is really unfair is that the rhetoric now coming from the Israeli Basketball Association uses words like "antisemitism". I have said in this House before, to oppose Israeli policy in terms of Palestine is not antisemitism. It has nothing to do with Jews, the Jewish faith or Judaism at all. It has to do with the disgraceful behaviour of Israel in terms of its neighbours in Palestine. It is war crimes and, in my view, it is genocide specifically of the population in Gaza. For the Israeli Basketball Association to criticise Basketball Ireland for not responding in the spirit of sport at the same time that it is allowing its players to pose with the Israel Defense Forces, in the presence of heavy arms, is absolutely outrageous. In fact, it shows just how far they have drifted from the spirit of sport and accusing individual players. If there are individual players on the Irish basketball team who have decided not to play then that is their decision and I praise them for it without criticising those who have decided to play. It is a very unfair position to put this team in. They are doing their best to represent this country. Now they are in a situation where they are being criticised and praised, depending on which side people are on. They are not politicians. They are sportspeople and should be allowed to get on with playing their sports. We should send a very clear message to FIBA, which is the international body, that the spirit of sport, which are the terms used by the Israeli Basketball Association, is very much absent from the behaviour of the Israeli team in terms of their approach to this and putting people at the heart of this does sport no good whatsoever.