David McVey
I’ve carefully avoided addressing, thus far, any actual issues regarding Israel and Palestine. I may be shallow, but I recognise the seriousness of the conflict that rages there and am perfectly aware of Israel’s crimes and inhumanity, its flouting of UN resolutions. But it’s the protest at Tynecastle that concerns me here. We know what they were protesting about; but who were they protesting to? And what did they hope to achieve?
There were no senior – or, I suspect, even junior – officials from the Israeli regime at Tynecastle. The game was not televised (I’m not even sure if it was videoed) nor was it widely publicised. The crowd was small, just a little over 800, including the protestors. The only recipients of the chants, the boos, the howls and – let’s be honest – the hate were a dozen or so young women in a strange country in pouring rain playing a football match in which they knew they would get hammered. The writer of the match report on the shekicks.net women’s football website put it well:
…they booed through the anthem, which at a women’s game where the girls are just there to play and the eyes of the world’s media are frankly everywhere else, just lacks class imho, and I’m sympathetic to the cause they are allegedly championing.
However, as they continued chanting and waving Palestinian flags and having their photograph taken repeatedly while the real supporters filed out, it was clear that the mob had had lots of fun during their 90-minute hate and felt rather good about themselves. Which was perhaps the whole point of the exercise.
The protest would have been reported as a great success on pro-Palestinian websites. In fact, it amounted to a PR own goal and a complete failure to get across their message to those they affect to be addressing. No Israeli with influence heard their chanting; no Scots were won over to their cause and some may even have been lost to it. Saturday 16 June 2012, saw, perhaps, the worst protest ever.
David McVey is a writer and lecturer who worked for many years at the then University of Paisley. He writes both short stories and non-fiction
