Although Jews formerly excelled in all sports, Israel’s earlier Zionists regarded it as a waste of time that could be better employed in tilling their stolen land, Declan Hayes writes.

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When a Chaldean Christian friend got Yemen TV to recently interview me here and here regarding the hiding they are giving Israel, my mind kept drifting to English football players David Beckham, Matt LeTissier, Eric Cantona, Gary Lineker and Mo Salah rather than on simply praising Yemen’s practical efforts to end the Gaza turkey shoot.

I confess to having a soft spot for Becks, not because of his football prowess but because Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, the two young girls murdered at Soham, both wore his replica Manchester United shirts, when they were murdered. The key thing, to me at least, is two two angels both wore the same shirt and both no doubt had an innocent schoolgirl crush on him which was their right, and that of every other school girl and school boy.

Beckham is now yesterday’s god, replaced by Liverpool’s Mo Salah and a galaxy of others, who need not detain us except to say that some of them joined in when Salah berated UEFA for not condemning the murder of Solomein Obeid, the Palestinian Pelé, whom the Israelis deliberately cut down as he lined up for food handouts from their agents. Although I had never seen Obeid play, to be favourably compared to Pelé is, perhaps, the greatest honour any player could be given, especially for a player reduced to begging for alms for his children from NATO psychopaths.

But that is precisely why Obeid (and Mohammed Shaalan, one of Palestine’s best basketball players, and star athlete Allam Abdullah Al-Amour) was murdered and why former football greats like Cantona and Lineker, who was banished from the BBC’s main football programme, saluted him. Like those Soham girls, they too retain a child-like respect for the beautiful game and those who excel at it in the most horrible of circumstances. And all credit to them for that.

But that is a garland Israel has never claimed because, even before independence, they were slaughtering Palestinian athletes, including champion Jordanian weight lifter Nader Afouri, whom they relentlessly tortured from 1967 to 1980, until they left him deaf, blind and incontinent.

Although Jews formerly excelled in all sports, Israel’s earlier Zionists regarded it as a waste of time that could be better employed in tilling their stolen land and putting undesirables like Obeid, Shaalan, Al-Amour and Afouri six feet under, while their allies overseas helped to muzzle Salah, Lineker and other stray dogs howling in the wilderness.

Although we formerly looked at the disproportionate punishment Russia and Belarus still receive in the international sporting arena, the Indian subcontinent’s incarceration of star cricketer Imran Khan at the hands of Pakistani gangsters best exemplifies this malaise. Whereas England has football stars, the Indian subcontinent has cricketing gods and few were held in higher esteem than Imran Khan, who brought Pakistan unprecedented glory when he captained their national cricket team.

But, though Khan may well have been a cricketing god, cricket in the Indian sub-continent is controlled by the same old cliques that have been in place since colonial times and those cliques are just a Bollywood version of the fossils who control English, European and world soccer, basketball, weight-lifting and athletics. They care no more about the Palestinian Pelé or the Pakistani Don Bradman than do the gangsters who tortured and murdered Obeid, Shaalan, Al-Amour. Afouri and thousands like them and they would have no problem slapping Salah down like they did Lineker and Le Tissier.

Israel’s Middle Eastern policy and the role martyrs like Obeid, Shaalan, Al-Amour and Afouri play in it is quite simple. It is to show those they conquer that they should abandon all hope and that their ummah and their gods are both as powerless against mighty Israel as Afouri was when he was finally released.

Although Salah is still motoring, we have to understand the constraints he and his fellow stars labour under. Not only do they have to work within the considerable training and other constraints their sport places upon them but their governing bodies, UEFA in Salah’s case and the BBC and other NATO outlets in the case of Lineker and Le Tissier, severely constrict their capacity for independent humanitarian action. Condemn Putin and Belarusian gymnasts to your heart’s content but question Israel’s murder of Obeid, Shaalan, Al-Amour and Afouri, and expect the fires of hell to consume you.

Although NATO apologists could argue that U2 and Madonna have recently come out in defence of the Palestinians, it has to be said that those fossils used every single Israeli trope to mitigate the war crimes of the Zionist state. It would have been better if they had said nothing.

But that could not happen as their assigned role is to muddy the waters and to form a dyke against the outrage young American students have expressed against these ongoing war crimes not only against Palestinian sports heroes but against Palestinian kids, who would love a chance to cheer on one of their own without having to get a bullet through the head for their efforts.

Mossad and MI6 are, of course, aware of all these undercurrents and U2 and Madonna are not the only cards they have recently played to deflect this swell of criticism. The BBC has been busy highlighting racist taunts in English football matches and some tree somewhere being cut down, as if petty taunts and petty vandalism are more newsworthy than the Stalingrad on steroids that is Gaza.

And, though Iran is right to blast Ugandan Christian Zionist jurist Julia Sebutinde’s ICJ pronouncements on Gaza, more to the point in the context of UEFA and Pakistani cricket is who puts ignoramuses like her into such pivotal positions and why are the rest of us, our tin gods like Salah and Khan included, effectively silenced and disenfranchised?

And who, in the name of God, gave the blood soaked Uncle Sam the right to put a $50 million bounty on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, like he is one of their black hats in a 1950s’ B grade Western and like Venezuela has not friendly diplomatic relations with most of the world’s countries?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question because Bill Gates (no angel himself) would quickly go hoarse if he were to call out all of America’s crimes and he would quickly go broke if he were to offer comparable bounties on the heads of America’s top 10,000 war criminals who would be but the top of a very big iceberg that covers not only UEFA and Pakistani cricket but much else besides.

Though Mo Salah is to be commended for his shot on UEFA, long shot screamers like his won’t do the trick and it will take much more than the backroom tactics of Liverpool FC to get the result for Palestine and all of the Middle East that all civilised people want in this situation where NATO has the referee, the linesmen, the scorekeepers, the umpires, the commentators and much more besides in their collective pocket.

Consider, for example, the case of Norman Finkelstein, who wrote The Holocaust Industry in 2000 and who is still dining out on it. When I extended him an offer to visit the Syrian Arab Republic shortly after Russia entered the fray there, this bum said he would gladly come but only if he were given extensive media coverage to attack Assad and the heroic Syrian Arab Army, who were then battling the head hackers street by street on a number of diverse fronts.

Although it is considered haram to attack opinionated narcissists like him, they are a major impediment to people like Salah or Le Tissier getting a clear shot on goal because, though very important strikes are happening in Belgium and in the Netherlands in support of Gaza and the world’s top harpists are shunning Israel, the people of the Middle East need a clear field for Salah and other champions like him to shine without the likes of Finkelstein clouding the pitch.

To further emphasise that point, consider this silly Iranian petition on behalf of Gaza I signed here just to get those deadweights off my back. When the UN officials wade through the badly written letter and its endless praise for Iran’s Islamic revolution, the MI6 officials they pass it on to will undoubtedly dismiss those who signed it for the irrelevant Iranian-sponsored morons many of them are.

And, while Iran expends valuable energy on narcissistic efforts like that, Israel will fortify and expand her spider’s webs ever more to ensnare and throttle not only all future Palestinian Pelés and Palestinian Maradonas but galaxies of other Palestinian stars like Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos and Bella Hadid as well. And, diabolical though all those Israeli crimes are, it is infinitely worse that the leaders of Western Christendon, along with the leaders of the global sports and fashion industries, let them get away with all that.

When I next appear on Yemen TV, I hope to praise Yemen’s national football team (could do better) and praise some other great Arab heroes like Palestinian Orthodox nun Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, seen here and here with Tucker Carlson trying to surmount the same sorts of obstacles with respect to Gaza that Mo Salah faces. But say what I like and tweet what Salah or anyone else likes, until NATO’s spider’s web of collaboration is torn down in the cricketing, footballing, diplomatic, religious and media worlds, many more Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, Syrian, Yemeni, Iraqi and Iranian innocents will have to die. That is just the way it is until they change the record and we upend their neverending game of death.