MPs, footballers, and those who work to curb antisemitism met as part of a panel organised by the Henry Jackson Society on November 29 to discuss the unsettling levels of abuse towards Jewish people across world football.
Joe Jacobson shared his experiences with the panel:
“Being one of only three or four active Jewish players in the English game, I feel like I have to represent where I’m from and my background and give us a voice.”
Jacobson, a Welsh footballer who made his debut for Cardiff FC at the age of 19, was the first Jewish player in 25 years to play in the UK.
He said: “For me the only times I’ve ever questioned anything in football is probably in the changing rooms with the players that I play with; I’ve been in there when players have been talking about conspiracy theories towards Jewish people and I just sit back and listen and then ask myself questions about where they get their information from.”
“It all just seems to come from social media, I think that’s the worst thing about social media at the minute, the abuse.”
Jacobson then explained that the move against antisemitism in football is still in its infant stage but it has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years.
“It was about seven or eight years ago I got invited to go to a school and talk about my experiences and my background and the problem is that Kick It Out are a tiny organization, and they couldn’t put me in too many places.”
“It’s only up until recently where we’ve created this Player Advisory Board where I’ve offered up my services again and we got together and said ‘we want to make this happen’.”
Last year, every club in the Premier League adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, in an effort to increase education surrounding the topic and reduce ignorance and hate.
Although this seemed like an important step at the time, people have questioned what practical steps have been taken to ensure antisemitism gets eradicated from football pitches around the UK.
“What does it really mean to say that the IHRA has been adopted? Is this a certificate which is put in a frame on the wall so that everyone can pat themselves on the back or is it really anything more than that?” asked Michael Rubinstein, a member of the Jewish Representation Council, at the panel’s Q&A.
“How can the IHRA be of any real value if those who say they adopt it have no training into what it actually means and what to do?”
Rola Brentlin, Head of Special Projects at Chelsea Football Club answered: “I think the good thing with the IHRA is that it allows you to do very little or a lot and you need to offer that scale to clubs. Not everyone can do everything.”
Rola Brentlin | Source: Flickr
As she dove deeper into her response, it became clear that the IHRA has become a tool to combat the general public’s lack of knowledge of basic Jewish history.
“I think what the IHRA very successfully has done is to unite everyone around a definition. How can you fight something if you don’t know what you’re fighting? I think even if it’s just symbolic, even if clubs just sign it and hang something on the wall, it’s fine.”
Rola Brentlin and Chelsea Football Club have paved the way toward a future free of hate based on people’s differences.
Chelsea was the first sports club in history to adopt the IHRA definition under the leadership of owner Roman Abramovich, a Jewish man himself.
The club also launched its “Say No to Antisemitism” campaign back in 2018 which tackles racism and discrimination in stadiums, in hopes of making a change to society as a whole.
The initiative followed Chelsea’s public criticism of its own fans after they were heard singing antisemitic chants against rivals Tottenham back in 2017.
The campaign attempts to tackle the issue at its core by educating disruptive fans about Jewish history by inviting them on trips to Auschwitz as an alternative to banning them from the stadium.
This lack of knowledge around the topic can also be traced back to the 2014 debate surrounding the term “yid”, which was used by Tottenham fans in chants. This debate led to David Cameron intervening by claiming that Spurs fans should not be punished for using the term seeing as hate is not the motivation behind its usage.
Unlike other minorities in football, the Jewish community is yet to receive any representation from an international football star in the way that players like Liverpool’s Mohammed Salah and Manchester United’s Paul Pogba have done for the Islamic community.
It is with events like these that a light can be shed on people’s differences and hopefully there will be many more down the line. As the task of kicking antisemitism out of football progresses, voices such as Joe Jacobson and Rola Brentlin will be pivotal in paving the way for improvement.