Do Jewish Lives Matter too?

For more than a year, English footballers took the knee in solidarity with a petty criminal who was murdered by a cop in Minneapolis. Yet after the racist slaughter of more than a thousand Israelis, the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust, England’s Football Association can’t even be bothered to light up the Wembley arch in Israel’s colours.

It is reported that the FA is ‘unlikely’ to light the arch with the Israeli flag. It is worried about being seen to ‘take sides’. It also fears ‘a backlash from some communities’. So it’s taking the knee again. This time to the feelings of certain members of minority groups who hate Israel. Apparently their emotions, their bigoted sensitivities, their right never to see the Star of David, matter more than the memory of a thousand massacred Jews.

This is surely one of the most snivelling, cowardly decisions a public body has ever made. To elevate your own fears – in this case the fear of irritating Israelophobes – over making a show of solidarity with a nation whose men, women and children have just been butchered by a virulently racist terror group is unconscionably spineless.

The BBC reports that FA officials who attended the meeting at which this yellow-bellied decision was taken expressed concerns that ‘lighting the arch could be divisive’. Oh grow a backbone. Get a moral compass. So what if you get irate emails from Hamas fanboys? The citizens of an ally of ours have just been slain in the most gruesome fashion imaginable and you should put their flag up.

What makes this chicken decision even more galling is that usually the FA loves signalling its virtue. Modern football is awash with moral gestures. There was all that knee-taking. The Ukraine flag was emblazoned on the Wembley arch following Russia’s invasion. Footballers wear Pride-coloured laces, go on about ‘kicking racism out of football’, etc etc.

Yet when it comes to the mass murder of Israelis, football’s bigwigs erm and ahh. Apparently there will be a minute’s silence ahead of the England-Australia match at Wembley tomorrow, but no lit-up arch. No Israeli colours. No paraphernalia from that most problematic of countries. There’ll be a ‘message of peace and unity’ instead. Maybe they’ll sing Kumbaya.

I normally find the flag-waving and flower-laying that follow terror attacks a tad annoying. It never feels like enough. It’s an easy, fleeting gesture in lieu of the frank discussion about radical Islam we really need to have. But it’s even worse when such virtue-signalling is called off because the nation that’s been attacked gives some people the ick.

So no Israeli flag at Wembley. No Israeli flag at the Scottish parliament. Some morons scaled Sheffield Town Hall to tear down the Israeli flag that was flying there. And don’t even think about sympathising with Israelis on social media. Look what happened to Kylie Jenner. The reality TV star shared a post on Instagram saying we must ‘stand with the people of Israel’ and the backlash from some of her 400 million followers was so ferocious she took it down.

It’s extraordinary. It was virtually mandatory to show online solidarity with George Floyd. Anyone who failed to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ on their Instagram page could find themselves hounded and shamed. Now such solidarity is outlawed. Say ‘Israeli Lives Matter’ and watch yourself get cancelled. ‘Why do you hate Palestinians?!’, armies of plummy Israelophobic loons will holler.

What a grim insight we’re getting into the racial hierarchies fashioned by identitarians and influencers. In their minds, the life of one African-American counts for more than the lives of a thousand Jews. How else do we explain that the killing of Floyd made them furious, for months on end, whereas the racist elimination of Jewish youths and Jewish grandmothers and entire Jewish families barely seems to have pricked their consciences at all. This is the inhuman hole you end up in when you organise humanity into boxes marked ‘oppressed’ or ‘privileged’ and judge their moral worth accordingly.

If it’s true, as the BBC says, that the FA is refusing to put up the Israeli flag because of a potential ‘backlash from some communities’, that is shameful in the extreme. Perhaps the FA is thinking of the Muslim community. Yes, there are a small number of Muslims who will balk at the sight of the Israeli flag. But what about our Jewish community? What about Britain’s Jews, some of whom will be going to Wembley tomorrow, many of whom will know someone who lost a loved one in Saturday’s anti-Semitic outrage?

They will know, as they walk the long approach to Wembley, towards the flag-less arch, that the decision was taken that their grief matters less than other people’s feelings. That their pain has been demoted below other people’s political beliefs, prejudices, whatever. They will know that other communities’ hatred for Israel has been accorded more moral weight by the FA than their community’s desire to show solidarity with Israel.

Shame on the FA. It still has time to rectify its dreadful moral error. Let’s hope it does. Jewish Lives Matter too.