‘Show Israel the Red Card’ is the latest slogan to get popularized among the Palestinian-sympathizer, typically leftist groups. This is specific to European football, with fans showing banners and chanting the new call at various games across the continent.
It all started in Scotland when the organized ultras group Green Brigades for the Glasgow, Scotland-based team Celtic announced that they would be protesting Israeli military engagement in Gaza during their game against the German side Bayern Munich in the Champions League on 12 February. They even printed out leaflets that they distributed among the match attendees explaining their stance.
‘Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing; it is practising apartheid; and it is illegally occupying Palestinian territory. All of this is in breach of international law. We call on football fans around the world who value life, humanity, dignity, freedom, peace and justice to be courageous and to use your platform to stand against the crimes of Israel and stand with Palestine,’ they wrote.
This was the first appearance of the ‘Show Israel the Red Card’ slogan on a banner during a football match. Celtic went on to lose that game 2–1 and thus was knocked out of the Champions League. However, their new political trend somewhat caught on with fans of the Spanish clubs Deportivo Alaves and CA Osasuna, with the Italian club Empoli following suit.
The implication of these messages is that pro-Palestinian fans would like to see the Israeli national team and clubs from the Israeli league be banned from European competitions. Russian teams were doomed to this exact fate in 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some people call FIFA and UEFA hypocrites for still allowing Israel to compete.
However, Israeli teams already have a major restriction on them since the start of the war in their country.
Due to safety reasons, no team from the Jewish state can play their international games at home, club or national team. Thus, inadvertently, they are suffering the same punishment Belarus is for supporting Russia in their war effort.
Hungary has been the country most eager to step in and help in that regard. The Israeli men’s national team played their remaining European Championship qualifiers in Felcsút, Hungary, in the fall of 2023 after the horrific 7 October attacks by Hamas. They will also be playing their two World Cup qualifiers in Debrecen, Hungary: against Estonia on 22 March and Erling Haaland’s Norway on 25 March.
For these efforts, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary’s administration has even been lauded by the French news agency AFP, although in a back-handed way: they insinuated Hungary is only doing so to mitigate the supposed high level of antisemitism in the country…
The Israeli national football team competing on the football stage has been causing tensions for a long time. In fact, the Jewish state’s football federation joined the European Association UEFA in 1994 to avoid having to play their Muslim-majority neighbouring countries in competitive football games. Due to the already tense relations in the region, that would have given fertile ground for a terrorist attack against the thousands gathered at the stadium.
Related articles:
