CELTIC fans kicked off a new campaign from the club’s infamous North Curve ahead of last week’s Champions League clash with Bayern Munich. Fronted by the Green Brigade and on behalf of Lajee Celtic – a collaboration between the Green Brigade and the Lajee Centre in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – the “Show Israel the Red Card” campaign has since blown up amongst football fans across the globe who are demanding action be taken against Israel in sport.
The Green Brigade are no stranger to standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian cause.
In 2023, when the heavy bombardment of Gaza was drastically upscaled, Uefa shamefully fined fans for displaying the Palestine flag at Celtic Park and the club controversially followed up with a ban on the flag’s display.
But it hasn’t stopped them – and neither it should. In fact, in response to their 2016 fine for the same offence, fans launched the Match the Fine for Palestine fundraiser and raised more than £175,000 for Palestinian causes.
Fans have long argued that Celtic was born from oppression, and that to not speak up for the oppressed is to deny the club’s own history – and they do have a point.
The Great Famine ultimately became the catalyst for its eventual conception. The soul of the club is undeniably interwoven with the experience of the working class, the oppressed and the marginalised in society.
Celtic were formally constituted in the winter of 1887 in St Mary’s Church Hall in Calton, at the behest of Brother Walfrid on a mission to feed the poor and hungry in Glasgow’s East End parishes. Much of its early support came from Irish Catholics who had fled to Scotland and who faced brutal discrimination on their arrival.
Since then, its mission and club values have been closely tied to the alleviation of poverty and marginalisation globally. It’s the very lifeblood of the club and its core support. To deny Celtic fans the right to protest injustice is to deny them the right to honour their own history and existence.
It’s particularly impossible to separate the Palestinian experience from the Irish one that underpins Celtic. Irish struggle under British colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries doesn’t just resonate with the Palestinian experience of Israeli occupation, genocide and mass displacement – it is the same beast in a different outfit.
Both the Irish and Palestinians have faced military oppression, the dispossession of their land, and struggles for self-determination.
For Irish people, the experience of British rule has been marked by a century of uprisings, the Great Famine, and the eventual independence struggle.
Palestinians have been resisting Israeli aggression since the mid-20th century. The struggle for sovereignty, it seems, transcends both time and borders – and solidarity is enduring.
“Show Israel the Red Card” is putting pressure on Fifa and Uefa to “do the right thing” and apply their respective statutes to expel Israel from international football. They argue it’s in keeping with action taken against Russia and in the past, South Africa, for similar human rights abuses. Some argue that politics should be kept out of football, but the fact is that for Celtic football is politics – it has always been politics.
Even if you disagree, genocide is not outwith the realm of the sporting world. In fact, the mass murder of Palestinian athletes is attributable to an intentional and well-understood mechanism of genocide.
The very fabric of genocide depends on the destruction of institutions, culture and practice – sport is intrinsic to genocidal success. At least 382 Palestinian footballers have been killed in Gaza and a further 235 other sportspeople; 147 football facilities have been destroyed alongside 140 other sports facilities.
It is not an abstract demand, it is every bit the business of Fifa and Uefa to enforce repercussions. It is not far-fetched to expect them to apply their own statutes. Statutes that they have not hesitated to enforce amid horrors of the past.
Cowardly, as it stands, they are more focused on silencing the Celtic fans who are lending their support to a cause with the entire weight of the world against it, but they are fast running out of places to hide as this campaign gains ground.
This may well be one example however of fan power triumphing over corporate structure. Despite match bans, fines and further action hovering over heads in Glasgow’s East End, fans remain undeterred and the Palestine flag continues to fly at Paradise. Not just at Paradise, but across the world.
Fifa and Uefa may well be able to dish out fines or impose match bans and flex their corporate iron fist, but the enduring solidarity among Celtic support has proven once again that it will not falter in the face of injustice and oppression.
The Green Brigade will, as it always has done, stand shoulder to shoulder with the underdogs. Arguably, the minute they fail to do so, is the minute they cease to exist. To not understand this or to hope that this passion will die at the first sight of a mere consequence is to fundamentally misunderstand the entire existence of Celtic Football Club, its history and the soul that has powered it exclusively for more than 125 years.
Just as we remember the Great Famine, we will remember Palestine years from now – and those who stood firmly against the genocide of its people.
