Ciara Mageean on Israel: it's too easy stay quiet and not speak out

Olympian Ciara Mageean at Tuesday's Team Ireland Olympic Day at Olympic House in Dublin. Pic: Tyler Miller/Sportsfile

Life would be easier, and quieter, if she stayed silent. But Ciara Mageean is well past that point, the reigning European 1500m champion feeling that she should use her platform to speak out about one of the great atrocities of our time.

In her recently released autobiography, My Greatest Race, Mageean wrote that she “firmly believed” Israel shouldn’t have been able to compete at the last European Championships as the state was “committing genocide”, and it’s a position she still holds now.

Russian and Belarusian athletes have been ostracised from athletics for the past four years due to the invasion of Ukraine, and Mageean has long felt the same standards should apply to Israel.

“It's ridiculous,” she said. “I think that governments the world over should be imposing sanctions on countries that are committing genocide. We've seen it in our sport with Russia. Why is the same option not happening towards another country that's wiping out an entire people?” 

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in February that the ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes would only change “when there is finally some kind of solution” to the war in Ukraine. 

Asked by The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, whether World Athletics would revisit its stance on Israel, which remains welcome in the sport, Coe said “no”.

“Look, as a sport and as a federation president, everything you watch closely, you have to,” he said. “But, no, at the moment, that is the position that we've taken.” 

Mageean believes many are afraid to express their views on Israel’s actions due to fears of being labelled antisemitic and the 34-year-old admitted that she was previously hesitant about voicing her opinion.

“I've thought about it a lot because life is a lot easier if you just stay quiet and you don't speak out,” she said. “You shouldn't live in a world where speaking out against murdering innocent men, women and children [is controversial], starving them and completely demolishing an entire population, where hospitals are targeted, doctors are targeted, the media is targeted. These are war crimes and me speaking out about that is controversial or brings on more trouble for me?

“I don’t understand a world where the consequences of speaking out against a genocide seem worse than the consequences for the people actually enacting a genocide, and I don't think that countries who are doing that should be able to be out there [competing in sport].” 

Since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel in October 2023, Israel has killed over 70,000 Palestinians and displaced close to two million people in Gaza, with over 1,000 killed since a ceasefire was called last October. 

In Lebanon, close to 4,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks and over a million people displaced since March.

Mageean, who was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer last year, has received abuse on social media for voicing her views on the situation.

“I've had horrible messages sent to me whenever I've shared those thoughts and wondered, ‘Maybe I should stop?’ Because I'm going through enough right now and I don't need messages coming into my DMs and people posting on my Instagram page, saying that I deserve to die of cancer, calling me antisemitic whenever I'm saying that maybe people shouldn't be murdered.

“I’m not antisemitic. I just don’t think it’s right to kill innocent people and I think they do [Judaism] a huge injustice by trying to use it as a tool in that way.” 

With ongoing debate about the Republic of Ireland’s Nations League tie against Israel in October, which is set to be played at a neutral, overseas venue and without fans present, Mageean believes a firmer stance should have been taken by both Irish and international authorities.

“This is the hard thing: it's not against the athletes,” she said. “It's very prominent in Ireland right now with the football and [the decision] should have been at the organisational side of that sport. That's where it should have come from and then it should come to our door and our country should speak up.

“Because the Irish have always been strong advocates for justice throughout the world and we need to be that example. I just ask people: Where’s their humanity?”