The Hooligans
on Israel as a hooligan state, and why we barrack them on.
Last Thursday, Israeli soccer hooligans clashed with pro-Palestinian protestors after a Europe League soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam, outside the Johan Cruyff Arena and in other nearby areas.
These attacks on the Israeli fans were in response to the racist riots said fans held on the streets of Amsterdam days prior, where the notoriously racist Maccabi supporters chanted “fuck you, fuck you, Palestine” and “Let the IDF win! We will fuck the Arabs!” and “Death to Arabs” while tearing down Palestinian flags around the city.
They also interrupted a minute’s silence for Valencia flood victims.
Another slogan gleefully belted out by the visiting Israelis was “No children left in Gaza!” and “there are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left”, a grim bit of revelry following the report revealing that children aged five to nine are the most represented age group amongst Gazans murdered by Israel since October 7.
In an instant, Israel’s propaganda apparatus lurched into action, and before you could call foul, pro-Israel Jewish groups, mainstram media, and heads of state were wringing their hands at what they quickly dubbed a “pogrom”. Soon, ludicrous analogies were being drawn between drunken Israeli fascists getting suplexed and the Holocaust.
A meme depicting a young Ann Frank with a yellow star mirrored by another young girl wearing the Maccabi Tel Aviv logo spread all over twitter, looking like a two second sight gag from a forgotten Wonder Showzen sketch. “Never again is Now!” read the image, a phrase whose meaning has been so blurred by its non-stop bandying about that it has passed beyond the grasp of sane comprehension.
Penny Wong, who seemingly has a V-chip in her frontal lobe courtesy of AIJAC, sweatily tweeted out:
And was immediately ratioed by everyone dumbstruck by the irony of “violence in all its forms is unacceptable,” a nauseating utterance from someone who has shrugged-off Israel’s bloodlust at every turn.
Australian media fell over itself regurgitating Israel’s pogrom narrative, it’s bent back not yet buckled from all the water it's been carrying on the rogue state’s behalf since the genocide began.
The ABC, who has been coddling Israel like it was one of its coke-addled Gen X panel comedians, was quick off the bat with a piece framing the Maccabi rioters as doe-eyed victims of unprovoked racist hate crimes. “Anti-Semetic hit and run squads leave Israeli soccer fans scrabbling to leave Amsterdam,” read the original headline. Inside the article, those soccer fans were given plenty of space to spin their tale of woe: “It was very scary, we were in a foreign country, we did not see even one policeman,” one of the Israelis told the ABC, “we did everything we could to avoid another minute in this country.”
The ABC then frames their “death to Arabs” chants as “profanities,” and their rioting as “demonstrating.” Genuine antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests are conflated, as they continuously have been, the ‘subtle’ message being that the two beliefs are, essentially, interchangeable.
This incident perfectly captures the disconnect between the pro-Israel narratives peddled by our leaders and media and the cold stark reality of Israeli behaviour.
Israel has the benefit of existing without context while shielding itself in its subversion of it, rejecting history yet blanketed by it, demanding its actions be bracketed by amnesia and ignorance if they are to be critiqued, or discussed, at all.
At the core of Israel’s delicately constructed reality is a refusal to understand the incredibly simple premise of “talk shit, get hit.” Any casual sports fan could tell you that the worst place to test the limits of this philosophy is at a soccer match in Europe. But Israel is the embodiment of this exchange from Dave Chappelle’s iconic Rick James sketch:
RICK JAMES: Why you hit me like that?
CHARLIE MURPHY: Cuz you hit me, man.
RICK JAMES: That was weeks ago, motherfucker!
And like Rick James, it has spent 70+ years screaming “fuck yo’ couch, n*gga!” to the world at large before scream-crying whenever the red carpet isn’t rolled out for it.
Israel is a hooligan state. Like any hooligan, it is bent on senseless destruction, drunk on hatreds so base and banal that it takes wilful ignorance, and dutiful subservience, to misinterpret their intent.
We have seen that obliging braindead-sub cuckoldry play out on a tedious loop these past few days, as we have just about every day the past 13+ months. Our government and media are sideline boosters of this apocalyptic hooliganism, blasting the vuvuzelas of genocidal acquiescence at any group or person willing to risk a red card by tackling Israeli fascism head-on.
It can only end in riots, really.
But as always, Israelis remain Israel’s worst enemy when it comes to branding. Their pathological love of filming and posting themselves committing war crimes, and/or simply being uncouth pricks, does a lot to undermine their carefully curated image as perpetual victims. Sadly, that curation is kept up by leaders, outlets, and platforms working on Israel’s behalf for reasons both obvious and opaque, and so we are told again and again that a murdered toddler is a “3-4 year old young lady,” a stray bullet accidentally “found its way” into a van and killed said toddler, and that “death to Arabs!” is not a genocidal chant, but merely a profanity.
You've got to wonder if Israel has just weaponised the media's desire to be out with "breaking news" by crafting the narrative (and footage) before acting like pricks so that they have their story ready to roll for the desperate press, who have long ago lost the ability to fact check anything much less a "breaking" story.
“blasting the vuvuzelas of genocidal acquiescence” is such a banger