“No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don’t care.
We are Millwall, super Millwall, we are Millwall from the Den.”
Strangely enough, this ostensibly inane football song was reverberating in my head throughout yesterday, as I watched and heard the world reaction to the IDF’s storming of the terrorist flotilla.
Even if the execution of the raid was ill-conceived (and I fear it was), it was justified. But, for sustained, exaggerated and unfair criticism and singling-out by the media, one can easily replace “Millwall” with “Israel”. And like the demonization of white, working class, Cockney football fans – an easy target for the press – that of the Jewish State has also created a siege mentality amongst its citizens and supporters.
The fans of my football team, Leeds United, also have much of this mentality (incidentally, we have also had – and I was there – our own bitter experience of the Turks). And, when it comes to international Islamofascism, working class football fans appear to have a better, more intuitive sense of right and wrong than that of the so-called “liberal”, Guardian-reading elite who so patronise them. Indeed, many of the friends and acquaintances I have made through following Leeds United have remarked to me how much they respect and admire Israel for dealing with Fundamentalists in a way that they wish their own government would.
My inner voice was also chanting, yesterday, the words that we Leeds fans direct at our team when it, as so often, underperforms. “What the f*ck is going on?!” was not, however, directed at the Israeli government or our brave young soldiers, but at the horrible media bias assailing my senses. Anyone who knows anything about Turkey can well imagine (if it can bear to) its reaction to another country daring to send aid to the Kurds – who are even forbidden to give their children Kurdish names – or supporting Kurdish claims for an independent state. But I won’t regurgitate my contempt for these sickeningly hypocritical knuckle draggers, only to say that Israel’s (former?) strategic cooperation with Turkey, a marriage of convenience, is no less a cause for shame than that with apartheid South Africa.
The scenes from the deck of the boarded vessel were a horrible reminder for Israelis of the Ramallah lynching, in October 2000. And, by yesterday evening, as I became even more incensed by the double standards of the international reaction – but, especially, that of the Arabs tyrannies and the two-faced Turks – I was soothed by the former soldier’s song, also appropriated by footie fans: “F*ck ‘em all! F*ck ‘em all! The long and the short and the tall . . .”
I ended a pretty horrible day with an adapted rendition of “If you hate Leeds United, have a go” (to the tune of "She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain").
The terrorists had “ha[d] a go”. Nine (do we have a minyan yet?) are on their way to their Virgins. And I, for one, am not going to mourn them or apologise.
Yes, f*ck ‘em all!
For original post (with links): http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/raid-on-terrorist-flotilla-...
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