Ireland's home match against Israel instead ended up behind closed doors in Serbia. Campaigners wanted it abandoned altogether. The match was held, but the argument around it offered a warning that Israel should take seriously. Playing against Israelis has become something requiring moral justification. The campaign to make Israel an unacceptable company has reached yet another ordinary corner of European life.
The intended destination is South Africa-style isolation. The boycott movement explicitly invokes the campaign against apartheid South Africa when demanding Israel’s exclusion from international sport.
Its ambition extends beyond sport and into cultural life and commerce. Each exclusion helps entrench the assumption that relations with Israel are disreputable, until maintaining them requires more political courage than severing them.
Israel’s security depends in part on keeping other countries involved. I suspect the erosion of its international standing may already pose a greater strategic threat than any single armed enemy it faces.
Israel has built formidable capabilities to defeat military attacks. Sustained isolation would erode the international relationships that help finance and supply those capabilities, while making foreign support harder to mobilize in the next war.
Normalizing exclusion
The Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Aston Villa showed how far this could go. Israeli supporters were excluded from Villa Park. A parliamentary inquiry subsequently found that West Midlands Police had relied on inaccurate information and downplayed threats to the visitors. The effect was extraordinary: an institution responsible for protecting visitors helped construct the case for keeping them away.
The Eurovision Song Contest brings that pressure into people’s homes. Broadcasters withdraw because Israel participates, making the country’s inclusion costly for organizers. The performer becomes an accessory to a political dispute by virtue of representing Israel. A cultural boycott familiarizes millions of people with the idea that the Israeli presence itself is objectionable, reaching audiences that would never read a foreign policy argument.
Israel’s answer has often rested on its usefulness. Foreign economies benefit from Israeli technology, and foreign militaries want its defense products. Intelligence cooperation gives governments another reason to preserve the relationship. These are substantial advantages, grounded in expertise that cannot be replaced simply because a campaign demands it. Israel has good reason to cultivate such dependence.
The dangerous assumption is that usefulness guarantees political protection. A government can continue to benefit from Israeli expertise while publicly distancing itself from Israel, calculating that the practical relationship will survive the insult.
Commercial interdependence then becomes an excuse for Israeli complacency. Ministers abroad learn that they can reap the domestic rewards of hostility without immediately surrendering the benefits of cooperation.
Britain illustrates the vulnerability. Its 2023 agreement with Israel promised deeper defense and technology cooperation. In May 2025, the government suspended negotiations on a new free trade agreement.
Subsequent measures have included further sanctions over settler violence and restrictions on settlement trade. Those restrictions target settlements, and the wider relationship continues; Britain buys tank armor, radar, and aircraft systems from Israel. Israel’s usefulness has plainly failed to prevent a substantial political deterioration.
Hostility pays
The electoral incentive warrants attention. In 2024, independent candidates, using Gaza as a prominent campaign topic, defeated Labour candidates in several constituencies. It is difficult to separate Labour’s subsequent posture from that experience.
Ministers offer legal and humanitarian arguments, but they also face an obvious temptation to exploit hostility toward Israel to gain votes. The benefits of intelligence cooperation are largely invisible to the electorate; a public denunciation is readily available for political consumption.
Online disinformation makes that calculation easier by feeding outrage with an inexhaustible stream of material. Iranian influence operations have deliberately sought to undermine international support for Israel. Fabricated claims circulate alongside genuine suffering, making it harder for audiences to distinguish evidence from manipulation.
Failures by Israel’s own government provide further ammunition. Settler violence, idiotic comments by cabinet members, and evasive official responses damage the credibility needed to challenge lies, giving people already inclined toward a boycott even fewer reasons to reconsider.
The strategic cost accumulates unevenly. A lost research partnership may seem manageable until investors question whether an Israeli connection will hinder their other business. Defense customers may seek alternative suppliers to avoid political controversy.
Lower export earnings would eventually reduce the tax revenues that support Israel’s armed forces. Intelligence ties could outlast public friendship yet offer little protection against trade restrictions. Israel could remain militarily powerful, while the economy sustaining that power becomes progressively harder to operate internationally.
Total isolation remains some distance away. Israel retains powerful partners, and both the Irish matches and Eurovision proceeded with Israeli participation.
However, the campaign against Israel can make progress through repeated, smaller victories, demonstrating to institutions that excluding Israelis saves trouble. A foreign government may still need an Israeli defense system even as its ministers discover that attacking Israel wins applause.
The next crisis could find Israel seeking political support from governments that still buy its weapons, yet no longer defend its legitimacy.■
Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer, senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, and co-host of The Brink podcast.