The Handshake Ireland Wouldn’t Give

I began my photographic career specializing in sport, working at the highest level for the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. Much of that work was soccer. Long before I began analyzing how photographs shape perceptions of Israel, I was photographing the game I had loved since childhood.

That is the background I bring to the sight of Republic of Ireland soccer captain Dara O’Shea keeping his hands behind his back before facing Israel. He shook hands with the match officials but did not shake hands with Israeli captain Manor Solomon.

I know what that moment means in a sporting photograph. The handshake is a routine courtesy between opponents about to compete. Nobody is being asked to endorse a government or settle a war. Yet here was an Israeli player being denied that courtesy, in front of the cameras, because of the country he represents.

As a lifelong supporter and someone who made his living photographing elite sport, I found it sickening. I also know the photographic opportunity a pre-match ceremony provides. The cameras are already trained on the captains. O’Shea turned that routine encounter into a public snub, his hands held behind his back making the refusal unmistakable. Before a ball had been kicked, he had supplied a photograph of an Israeli player being treated as someone you would not touch.

Ireland won 3–0. I can accept Israel losing a soccer match. What I cannot accept is treating an Israeli opponent as unworthy of a handshake.

After Argentina beat Egypt at this summer’s World Cup, online conspiracy theorists dragged Mossad into an imaginary plot to fix the result. Presumably the agency’s supposed mastery of international soccer took the evening off in Debrecen.

The display before kickoff went well beyond the captains. Ireland’s players bowed their heads during Israel’s national anthem. The gesture extended to the Irish bench, with coaches and management joining in. The Irish Times reports that Football Association of Ireland (FAI) chief executive David Courell and president Paul Cooke did the same. Manager Heimir Hallgrímsson also declined to shake hands with Israel coach Ran Ben Simon.

Players, coaching staff and senior officials had turned the ceremonial opening of a soccer match into a public demonstration against their opponents. I found that collective display despicable. What had Solomon or his teammates done to any of them?

The black armbands came with an explanation that deserves to be quoted accurately. Courell said they recognized “all lives lost in the conflict.” But after scoring Ireland’s third goal, Jack Moylan kissed his black armband. RTÉ’s accompanying photograph caption describes him holding it up toward Israeli supporters.

The FAI’s language was universal: all lives lost. Moylan’s gesture was directed at Israeli supporters after he had scored against their team. In that setting, the armband functioned as a taunt. He had taken a symbol presented as shared grief and made it part of a celebration at his opponents’ expense. The hypocrisy was there in the contrast between the association’s words and the player’s actions.

And what did the bowed heads and withheld handshakes achieve? Are Palestinians free today? Is anyone in Gaza’s life easier because Dara O’Shea would shake the referee’s hand but not Manor Solomon’s?

This was virtue signaling at the expense of fellow sportsmen. Concern for Palestinian civilians does not require the public humiliation of Israeli players. Mourning the dead does not require withholding courtesy from the living.

UEFA should have insisted that basic sporting respect applied to Israel’s players too. An organization that promotes respect ought to have an answer when one national team makes a spectacle of denying it to another.

I spent the early part of my career photographing what makes sport worth watching. Last night, the image that stayed with me was a captain keeping his hands behind his back. He had no difficulty finding them for the officials.

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