Ireland played Israel yesterday and half the country treated the fixture like a moral injury. A stain. As if sharing a pitch with Jews was the darkest thing their football history had ever asked of them. October 17, 1936. Dalymount Park. Dublin. The German national team lined up in front of 28,000 people, threw out the Nazi salute, and stood through the anthem with the swastika hanging next to the tricolor. The Irish Free State had welcomed them off the plane. The bus that carried them through Dublin was dressed in Nazi flags. The players were proud to shake the German players hands. The match programme went to auction decades later with the swastika still on the cover, sold as memorabilia. Ireland won 5-2. That game is in the archive as a famous afternoon. This video is the proof, not a rumor. So the stain, in the Irish telling, is Israel. Not hosting Hitler’s team in their own capital three years after he took power. Not the salute on their grass. Not the flag they allowed to fly. They do not hate a fixture. They hate a people. 1936 told you which side they could live with and embraced as friends. Yesterday told you which side they still cannot.