A lot of people are continuing to ask me about the poor conduct of the Irish team in not shaking hands and bowing during the Israeli national anthem. You are right on its face to criticise such conduct, but please note that those of us in Ireland who love Israel and the Jewish people, are not doing so. That is because we know what our team has been subjected to, it’s been a months-long frenzy trying to force a boycott of this match. When these calls towards the Football Association of Ireland failed, the mob turned on the players themselves; in recent weeks they have been at the other end of an intimidation campaign of a scale that outsiders simply cannot fathom. All pushed by our media establishment and select politicians while our government has remained silent throughout. As someone who has endured intimidation campaigns by Irish anti-Israel ideologues, I do not judge these men for how they responded to such viciousness. They were doing what they had to do for their own safety and wellbeing in this country. As the Israeli captain Dor Peretz said, outsiders can't understand the reality on the ground for Israelis. Similarly, outsiders cannot possibly understsnd the reality on the ground here and the depth of anti-Israel hysteria. It is frighteningly unhinged and near religious in fervour. I am intimately knowledgeable of the steep price to be paid in Ireland if you are publicly sympathetic to the Jewish homeland, and I do not at all judge young footballers being unwilling to pay it. The big picture is the Irish media and political establishment for leading a campaign of harassment against the players such that they were put in that position. That is who you should be criticising.