The game’s stakeholders must meet with Jewish bodies to take guidance and spell out the penalties for discriminating against my community
Football is rooted in love. As kids, we love the simple joy of the game, and as we grow alongside it we love how it melds with what we love – community, family and friends. Football is who we are.
But where there are in-groups there are out-groups, and while as fans our antipathy to everyone who is not “us” mainly constitutes harmless fun … sometimes it doesn’t. The WhatsApp conversations of the Ashburton Army, a prominent Arsenal supporter group, were riddled with antisemitism that included references to Israel, the Holocaust and circumcision. Though I wasn’t surprised when I heard about them because to a Jew, antisemitism is never surprising, when I saw them I was staggered by their harrowing specificity, blase ferocity and mind-boggling abundance – likewise the apparent failure of any of the chat’s administrators to intervene. It is partially because of that omission that police are now investigating the matter.
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