Celtic’s UEFA Fine Was A Consequence Of The PFLP Flag, More Than The Palestinian One.

After I put up my article earlier today on the flag’s situation, and the latest UEFA fines, I spoke to someone in a good position to know the full story.

They assured me that UEFA’s sanction for “a provocative message of an offensive nature” is in no small part because amidst those Palestinian flags was the now notorious PFLP one.

That is significant. As I’ve said already, Celtic does not get sanctioned by UEFA for nothing. We’re not a club they would automatically have in their crosshairs.

During that period when the Ibrox club was frequently in the dock, numerous attempts were made by people in and on the periphery of Scottish football to drag us into that affair … UEFA scrutinised the songs being sung by Celtic supporters and found that there was no case to answer.

Palestinian flags have been getting flown at Celtic games for years. UEFA has only once issued a fine prior to this and it was in the very specific case where a section of the support flew them in large numbers because we were playing a team from Israel.

That was the definition of a “provocative message of an offensive nature.”

I argued today that the display against Atletico Madrid was not.

The trouble is, UEFA considers this stuff in context, and in my opinion that’s no bad thing. Because context is what changes the meaning of something which might otherwise be innocuous.

I wrote an article on this site a few years back specifically about the N word … the whole point of the article was context, because the piece was about how we use language, and it was provoked by a stupid Ibrox fan site article that said The Green Brigade’s use of the word “fenian” to describe themselves had to be sectarian if Ibrox fans using it was.

Such an idiotic point that one, but one that demanded a robust response. In terms of the N word, I pointed out that there is a clear difference between a black comedian using it on stage and a white supremacist shouting it through a loud hailer.

Context is everything. Context is why we were fined by UEFA here.

I marvel at the stupidity of someone who wanted to make a point about the suffering of the Palestinians by flying the flag of an organisation the EU considers a terror group.

And The Green Brigade “variant” of that banner, what are we to take that to mean except that these armchair revolutionaries imagine themselves to be active participants in a war? From thousands of miles away.

If that’s not a sterling example of the sort of bourgeois self-indulgence they frequently criticise for being present on our board I don’t know what is.

The very presence of those PFLP banners in the crowd that night tainted everything else the fans were trying to do. It changed the context. It made Celtic Park a place where the armed attack on Israeli civilians was not only being rationalised but celebrated.

That this did not dawn on the people who brought those horrendous banners into the stadium appals me.

Without those PFLP flags, the whole event has a different vibe and UEFA would probably not have issued a sanction. As I understand it, those banners were explicitly mentioned in the UEFA report, and that means they were the main reason we were fined.

To put it in another context, UEFA fined us more for the “provocative and offensive” display than Olimpiakos of Greece were ordered to pay for racist chanting by their fans.

Does that sound to you like the fine was levied for the Palestinian flags or something more serious?

The answer is obvious when you look at it like that.

The widespread interpretation of the fine as being for flying the flag of Palestine has to be challenged and that’s why I wrote the piece this morning and it’s why I’m writing this one now.

The sanction was not for banners of a political nature, which is what you would expect if UEFA were re-categorising the Palestinian flag in that fashion but for an offensive one … as usual the press has jumped to conclusions without thinking about the meaning of words.