Albert Einstein was once reputed to have said, when asked if he thought there was anything special about the Jews; I have every confidence that, if given the chance, Jews would behave exactly like all other nations. How prophetic those thoughts turned out to be. Last week I blogged about how white Australians were in denial about their history and culture. This week is the turn of the Israelis. All nations of course are fabrications, a collection of myths, half-truths and damn right lies. The nation state is an artificial construct, lines drawn in the sand to demarcate conquest and oppression of the other.

The most glaring example is the United States of America, a nation built on the near genocide of the indigenous peoples, the brutal enslavement of Africans, and three centuries of deep seated institutional racism, homophobia and abuse of women. And today, in the land of the free and the brave, thirty six million Americans receive their daily nourishment from charity soup kitchens, and one in three African-American males will find themselves caught up in the criminal justice system. In the most developed nation on earth, the self-inflicted slaughter of its own population by gun crime, drug abuse and junk food obesity has reached epidemic proportions. All this of course is not the official version as taught in schools.

And then there is Israel, the so called Promised Land. There can be no greater fabrication than this. Based on the ancient superstition of an omniscient god that had a special liking for the Semitic tribes of the Middle East, modern day Zionism has used its special relationship with US Imperialism to begin to construct a Greater Israel, which, following all other such similar projects, requires the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of those deemed to be in the way. We saw it in the Americas, where it is estimated that some ninety million indigenous peoples were wiped out to make way for the modern nation states of North and South America. And we saw it in Australasia where the indigenous peoples were brutally pushed aside to make way for European settlement. And we saw it across the African continent where European abuses of the African population and the unilateral creation of nation states is still creating reverberations to this day.

The creation of modern Israel is following the exact same pattern. Like the Europeans of earlier colonial times, Israel obscenely dresses up its colonial conquests with spurious nonsense about god, destiny and biblical promises. Amazingly, here we are in the 21st century, and still a sizable proportion of otherwise semi-intelligent beings buy into this concoction of ancient religious obscurantism. Aided and abetted by a genuine and understandable sympathy for the plight of displaced Jews after the industrial scale attempted genocide by European fascism, our modern day Zionists are behaving exactly as Professor Einstein predicted they would.

The displacement, marginalisation and criminalisation of Palestinians are dressed up by the Israelis with the usual sickening racist nonsense about the bad blood of their non-Semitic neighbours. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Every occupying force attempts to cover its tracts with such bile, none more so spectacularly than German fascism. Ah, the sick ironies of history. And once you base your expansionist plans on a lie everything else follows as surely as night follows day. Israeli football and Israeli sport generally is merely reflecting the larger Israeli picture. European Jews look down upon and discriminate against Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin. Both these groups look down upon and discriminate against Jews of Ethiopian origin. And Jews generally, with some noble exceptions, look down upon and discriminate against those of Arabic and Islamic background. Nothing very special here I can here Mr Einstein murmuring from his grave. Same old tribal nonsense we humans have been peddling for millennia. Little wonder that these ancient prejudices are played out on the football terraces in Israel.
It got so bad the other day that one group of Israeli football supporters burned down their own club rooms because the management had dared to buy in some Chechen players of Islamic faith. This, along with the systematic booing of their own non-Jewish players. Nothing special here, this sort of mindless tribalism happens across vast swathes of European football.

Jews have not always been the victims. Historically, when given the chance, they have proven every bit as brutal and oppressive as our more well-known historical villains. Professor Pinker, writing in his fascinating but flawed Better Angels of our Nature describes how the Israelites of Biblical times were more than happy to indulge in a spot of bloodletting and genocide, all dressed up of course in directives from God. Here’s some passages from the Old Testament to give us a flavour of the times: As the Israelites proceed towards the promised land, they meet up with the Midianites. Following orders from God, they slay the males, burn their city, plunder the livestock, and take the women and children captive. When they return to Moses, he is enraged because they spared the women, some of whom had led the Israelites to worship rival gods. So he tells his soldiers to compete the genocide and to reward themselves with nubile sex slaves they may rape at their pleasure. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women, children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Old Testament Numbers 31) Pinker P8

Professor Pinker continues his exposure of the of the blood soaked god of the Jews that modern day Zionists hold up as their moral guardian directing their cause of a greater Israel, all at the direct expense of course, of a Palestinian homeland: In Deuteronomy 20 and 21, God gives the Israelites a blanket policy for dealing with cities that don’t accept them as overlords: smite the males with the edge of a sword and abduct the cattle, women, and children. With a designated list of other enemies (Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites), the genocide has to be total: Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them as the Lord thy God has commanded thee. P8

Three thousand years later and the Israelites are still calling on an imaginary God to justify their conquests. Of course if there was such a god he would have to be dragged in front of a UN court for crimes against humanity. But of course, there are no gods, just the tribal brutalities of a species still trapped in its own pre-history.

So the question we have to ask ourselves is not, Is Israeli football/sport racist?, nor even, Is European football racist?, but rather, Does sport reflect the tribal prejudices of humanity at large?. And the answer of course, is a resounding YES, Israel no more or less so than other nations.