Recently, posts on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) have revealed that the Premier League is actively banning any show of solidarity with Palestine in general. In a Liverpool game a few days ago, a life-long Liverpool fan was escorted out of the stadium where he was forced to wait hours in the cold rain to wait for the coach home, without his hoodie which had been confiscated because it had pro-Palestinian paraphernalia on it.
From that same game, a video surfaced on Instagram of a steward asking a Liverpool supporter to put away the Palestinian flag he was showing. The steward sympathises with the objections from the fan saying that he had objected himself against the decision by the club but he was under strict instructions not to allow any show of solidarity with Palestine.
Previously, the fans of Celtic FC, who are first in the Scottish Premiership, held the Palestinian flag and chanted slogans in their favour despite the club asking fans not to. The club was still fined by the Premiership even though they had publicly asked fans not to show any form of support to the Palestinian plight before their games.
The Premier League has a history of using its’ platform to support humanitarian agendas against injustices. Fans have previously come out to the stadiums in droves to show their support for Black Lives Matter (BLM), the LGBTQ community, the plight of the Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion and more.
The League has gone as far as to hold moments of silence for these causes as well as make it mandatory for players to take a knee for BLM before the start of the match. Club captains are even forced to wear armbands in LQBTQ colors or emblazoned with the ‘No Room For Racism’ Slogan’.
However, it seems as if the atrocities carried out against 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza is not worth a mention. In fact, they’ve been actively suppressing any show of solidarity with Palestine.
The hypocrisy of both the West and Western-based football clubs/leagues never ceases to amaze.
For example, it is well-known that both Mesut Ozil and Karim Benzema have been the subject of brutal backlash, due to their support of any cause that supports Muslims in general. Ozil was kicked out of Arsenal due to his public support for the Palestinian cause as well as his social media posts against the Uighur genocide in China.
The club and the Western media began to paint a picture of him being kicked out because of his ‘poor performances’ but any football fan with half a brain could tell you that kicking Ozil due to supposedly poor performances is like Real Madrid kicking out Zidane because of a few bad performances. It is completely bizarre.
Karim Benzema has faced similar consequences because of his support of pro-Muslim causes. One of the only 5 French Balon D’Or winners in history, Benzema has earned his place as one of the best French footballers ever. Yet, he is subject to hatred from his own countrymen due to his support of the opposition against the hijab/abaya ban in France as well as his support of Palestine, being labelled a ‘traitor’ and ‘extremist or ‘Islamist’ by conservative French media.
The Premier League and the other leagues in general are proving to be nothing more than mouthpieces for Zionist propaganda. Being a football fan since as long as I could remember, it pains me to see clubs including the one I support becoming agents of censorship and propaganda against the horrific genocide of Palestinians by Zionist occupiers.
However, their fans are not of the same mind as we can see from the posts provided above as well as continued waving of Palestinian flags in matches all around the world, even Europe. We can only hope that the world begins to see through the lies so elaborately painted by the Zionist propaganda machine so that they can come to the conclusion that it is not a ‘complicated’ phenomenon.
As the Pakistani UN representative Munir Akram eloquently stated:
“We all know who started this. It is the 50 years of Israeli occupation and the murder and killing of Palestinians with impunity that started this. When you push the people into the corner they will respond. That is what the Secretary-General said. It did not happen in a vacuum. And look at the reaction that came from the Israeli representative. Insulting the Secretary-General. Asking for his resignation. They can’t face the truth. They can’t face justice. They can’t face the fact that the crime has originated from Israelis. The Israeli occupation is the original sin in this case and it did not start on the 7th of October.”