BBC Goes Full Goebbels In Support Of Israeli Soccer Hooligans

“IDF will fuck the Arabs!”, “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans chanting on 8 November, as reported by The Times of Israel. Yet the BBC just compared them to Jewish victims of the Nazi pogroms. Why this story matters is because of the outsized influence of the BBC – its content is shared as gospel by countless other broadcasters.

The BBC scores a spectacular own goal: reducing itself to an outlet for propaganda. The Times of Israel drills one into the back of the net by more honestly reporting both sides of a deeply unsavoury story.

“We must not turn blind eye to antisemitism, says Dutch king after attacks on Israeli football fans”, the BBC solemnly headlined on Friday evening last week.

King Willem-Alexander said, according to the Beeb’s Paul Kirby: “our history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse,” adding that the country could not ignore “antisemitic behaviour”.

Joining the outpouring of concern was Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema, “My heart goes out to the victims and to their families here and in Israel as well.” The Dutch PM rushed back from overseas to offer support to the Israelis, planes were said to be scrambled in Israel to fly to their aid. None was needed because, in the end, fewer than 10 Israelis were injured and none appear to have been kept in hospital (hundreds of Palestinians died during this time, with no outpouring of grief from King Willie or any European official).

The BBC continued in dramatic fashion: “The violence on Thursday night was condemned by leaders across Europe, the US and Israel. For many, it was especially shocking coming on the eve of commemorations marking Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogroms against German Jews.”

Let’s hit pause right there. The BBC just compared soccer hooligans to Jewish victims of Nazis pogroms. We need to go upstairs to the TMO (television match official) and replay the footage and see if any red cards need to be handed out for shoddy journalism or outrageous mendacity.

I gave myself the unpleasant task of reviewing footage and reports of the Maccabi fans from their arrival in Amsterdam ahead of a Europa League match through to when they were being chased around Amsterdam by all sorts of angry, violent people, including other football hooligans, outraged taxi drivers and members of the local Muslim community who couldn’t or wouldn’t take it anymore.

I saw footage of Maccabi fans gathering in a square in Amsterdam, chanting “Bomb Gaza!” and one of them scaling a private building to rip down a Palestinian flag to raucous cheers. I read accounts of taxi drivers of Middle Eastern origin being attacked, saw footage of random strangers being attacked, all sorts of fights breaking out – in a nutshell the kind of behaviour by Maccabi fans that has been widely reported in the mainstream media for years. It’s what they like to do – and the BBC knows this better than I do.

By week’s end, gangs had gathered, Israelis were chased, kicked over, etc. All the violence – and any antisemitic abuse – should be deplored, but I’m not sure we needed the BBC to go full Schindler’s List on this. What job were they really doing?

The Times of Israel had the decency to inject a bit more honesty into the story. “Maccabi fans filmed chanting racist slogans against Arabs upon arrival at Ben Gurion from Amsterdam” ran a headline on Friday. The same chants had drowned out the minute’s silence in the stadium for the Spanish flood victims:

“IDF will fuck the Arabs!”

“Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

So, let’s get this straight. The BBC likened these people to the Jewish victims who were terrorised in Germany in the 1930s. The BBC enlisted the memories of the Six Million to present hooligans on a racist, violent rampage – a few of whom then got a kicking – as being pitiable victims?

Here’s what Ofer Cassif a member of the Israeli Knesset said: “The spirit of Israeli fascism has reached Amsterdam: fans go on a violent rampage, beating, tearing up Palestinian flags in the streets as if they were an occupying force and shouting Nazi slogans in favour of the extermination of a nation, and whining when the situation degenerates.”

Imagine any human being chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” after an entire year of genocide in Gaza, after the deaths of so many thousands of children, after thousands of children have lost limbs due to US-Israeli violence, hundreds of thousands having to sleep in tents, a couple of million people being slowly starved by Israel. Imagine who is capable of chanting that.

They bear no resemblance whatsoever to my Jewish friends Olga, Hans and Lisa who I knew well as a young man, who were the soul of humanity and decency, and who had fled the Nazis in the 1930s.

If there is to be a comparison with the 1930s it is this: these hooligans come from a country that is doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to the Jews in the early stages of the Nazi reign of terror.

The BBC has proven itself to be an outrageously false and misleading outlet, peddling anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian propaganda dressed up as concern over anti-semitism. Burying a counterfactual or two deep in a story doesn’t cut it. The BBC has desecrated the memory of real victims – and most importantly it has shredded its credibility as a gold standard of reporting. Goebbels would be impressed.

Originally published here.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

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