Why don't footballers take the knee for Jews?

Meanwhile, in lockstep with the political gestures of the post-George Floyd world, the England team did “take the knee” to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Oh, the courage.

Interesting too to see how we handled that opening match with Iran, a philistine state with one of the worst human rights records in the world, whose police unleash heinous atrocities on women whose hijabs slip.

Given that the moral passion inspired by George Floyd’s murder was so powerful that it changed football norms, one might surely have expected England to take some moral stance against this regime’s treatment of women and girls.

You know,  something even grander than the taking the knee. Taking two knees, perhaps. Or standing tall and performing some gesture that the theocracy’s religiously conservative rulers may not appreciate.

Would ordinary Iranians, suffering live fire in the street, have appreciated such a move from England’s national team? We will never know.

What we do know is that the defiance from their own players while the regime’s anthem was sung — at some personal risk — made a huge impact on the morale of protestors. Which makes the lack of action from the England team all the more difficult to stomach.

Meanwhile, imagine the furore we could expect were England to face off against Israel in a football match. Ostentatious shows of solidarity with the Palestinians would be all but guaranteed, with the media providing frequent reminders of Israel’s “apartheid” cruelty, alleged violations of international law, yadda yadda.

Knees, hands, flags and keffiyehs would flung about as the world used the match as another opportunity to condemn the Jewish state.

In fact, the real elephant on the pitch is what these despotic theocracies say about, and do to, Jews.

Right under our noses, Qatar has banned kosher food and Jewish prayer during the 2022 World Cup and Israeli journalists trying to broadcast the event have been harassed and stonewalled by the Saudi, Lebanese and Qatari crowds.

That’s before we even came to the Iran match. As a Jewish spectator, I found it hard to ignore the fact that no football commentator mentioned that the Islamic Republic has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

Yes, it probably doesn’t help that there are no Jewish players in the Premier League. But if the England team is as serious about fighting “all forms of racism”, as its eager knee-taking suggests, one might reasonably expect some mention of Iran’s murderous antisemitism.  

Alas not. The Jewish exception is as ever in full play. This deafening silence is a neat illustration of how antisemitism works. Subtly, by implication and negation.

And for a gesture-happy team such as England, all we have seen is tacit acceptance of countries with appalling human right records and the deepest form of hatred towards Jews.

A previous version of this article reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran had “repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the Earth”. Whilst Iran had called for the “destruction” of Israel, it was inaccurate to report that it had also vowed to wipe all Jewish people of the face of the Earth. This correction has been published following an upheld ruling by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.