“So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth” – Revelation 3:16

The debacle of Ireland’s Nations League games against Israel illustrates the paradox that you can get burned by being lukewarm.

Through no fault of their own, Ireland’s players were left in a no man’s land. When it comes to the Israeli regime, the Irish Government is (in Alexander Pope’s phrase) “Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike”.

We have, as a consequence, left a group of young footballers to try to thread their passes between that impulse and that inhibition. Even if they were all called McMessi, they could never have managed it.

Eddie Vedder comes to the rescue of Bray band Florence Road in LA

John Banville cancels appearance at Spanish festival after it drops Argentinian author over pro-Israel stance

Visitors arrive ‘almost daily’ at my house expecting to stay in tourist accommodation

Ireland beat Israel in a bleak farce that leaves everyone feeling betrayed

Pan out from the football and we can see that something new has happened in the history of the State: for the first time, Ireland has consciously made itself an enemy of another country: Israel.

Ireland has, of course, had a fraught relationship with the United Kingdom, with particularly heightened tensions during the second World War, periods of the Troubles and Brexit. But those frictions are part of our own history – they are as intimate as the conflicts within a marriage.

Other than........

© The Irish Times