Rita Panahi: Virtue signalling AFL too gutless to back Israel

Don’t expect the AFL and its clubs to live up to the standards it demands of everybody else – when it should be speaking out, it stays mute and fails to take a stand.

Footy fans are owed an apology.

It’s the least the AFL and its clubs can do after needlessly involving the game in a divisive political debate.

What a colossal cock-up it was for the league, and its clubs, to back the Yes side in the contentious race-based referendum.

These clubs tried to persuade football supporters to back a deeply flawed, racist proposal, one solidly rejected by the Australian public.

The league and its clubs backed the Yes campaign. Picture: Morgan Sette

In the footy states of SA and WA, two out of three voters backed No.

The AFL is making a habit of treating its biggest stakeholder, the fans, with pure contempt.

There were plenty of other sporting codes who also foolishly backed the highly divisive Voice with little regard of what their members, wider fan base and employees wanted.

But the AFL’s referendum folly was not an isolated incident.

There has barely been a Leftist cause the AFL hasn’t enthusiastically backed to the dismay of around half their fan base, often considerably more.

From taking a knee for the neo-Marxist race-baiters of BLM to their incoherent and comically hypocritical LGBTQIAA+ advocacy; you can rely on the social engineers at the AFL to lecture the masses about what to think.

Just don’t expect the AFL and its clubs to live up to the standards it demands of everybody else.

Take the annual Pride Game involving the Swans, whose official airline partner is Qatar Airways – that’s the state-owned airline of a country in which members of the LGBTQIAA+ community face genuine oppression including beatings, jail and, in some cases, death.

The 2023 Pride Game between Sydney and St. Kilda. Picture: Phil Hillyard

Most sports fans, whatever their political persuasion, would prefer the game to be left alone.

The moral posturing of the league, particularly on the referendum, is a sign of extreme arrogance.

Most organisations wouldn’t be so cavalier about how they treat those who ultimately pay the bills.

But the country’s leading football code has the enormous advantage of knowing no matter how badly they mishandle matters, no matter how much they alienate and annoy fans, the overwhelming majority will continue to watch the game and barrack for their clubs.

Their love of the sport is greater than whatever disdain they may feel for the league and its incessant politicking.

This week the AFL has learnt that constantly taking a position on issues outside of football comes with certain obligations.

Many have wondered why the AFL has failed to express support for Israel and the Jewish community after Hamas terrorists launched a barbaric attack that saw more than a thousand civilians slaughtered.

The AFL has failed to express support for Israel and the Jewish community. Picture: AFP

Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission is among those who must be wondering why the AFL has failed to issue a statement in solidarity with the people of Israel.

“History will harshly judge those organisations that when Jewish babies were decapitated, when entire families were executed in cold blood, when women were raped, and when children were kidnapped, chose to remain indifferent and mute in the face of such butcheries,” he said.

There are issues that are contentious and up for legitimate debate like the referendum and then there is the beheading of babies.

When a recognised terror group rapes women, stabs infants and burns entire families alive then one would expect universal condemnation but, even as members of the Jewish community came under attack in Australia, the AFL maintained a deathly silence.

You see the Left’s anti-Semitism and Marxist worldview casts Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as the oppressed.

One would expect universal condemnation but the AFL has maintained a deathly silence. Picture: AFP

That makes any support of Israel a controversial move; one that will come with a backlash from the hard Left who increasingly think they own the game.

The same activists who call everyone “Nazis” cannot bring themselves to unequivocally condemn the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, football’s self-appointed moral arbiter, former Collingwood player Héritier Lumumba, was busy condemning Australia for standing with Israel.

“Australia’s stance is emblematic of its own inability/lack of desire to comprehend its ongoing genocide of First Nations People, by denying justice for the well documented history of massacres & poisonings, kidnappings of children, and mass-incarceration of Aboriginal people,” he wrote.

The diatribe didn’t end there but I’ll spare you the rest of it.

When it should speak, the AFL is mute and too gutless to take a stand, and when it should stay silent the league and its clubs want to lecture.