The Evening Times Puts The Liel Abada Celtic Situation In Its Proper Context.

I want to offer my heartfelt thanks, and congratulations, to Graeme McGarry of The Evening Times, who has written what seems, to me, to be a follow-up piece on McGowan’s garbage of the other day, the one about Liel Abada.

McGarry did what McGowan was too arrogant to actually do; he spoke to an Israeli journalist who actually understands this stuff and asked him for his view on the whole situation with our player and how Celtic is viewed.

Now I don’t know if McGarry went there expecting a negative slant, but he didn’t get one and he didn’t attempt to manufacture one. Give the guy his due. He played this straight, and genuinely wanted to get to the facts and the truth and having done it he has published what he was told without putting any kind of spin on it. He has not sensationalised this in any way, and that’s why I am commending his article.

McGarry spoke to a journalist over there called Uri Levy, who the article describes as one of the few Israelis to cover their game and Palestinian football. As such, he has experienced this war from both sides. In short, he’s a moderate, and thus a good guide to how sensible, reasonable people see this issue over there. He is obviously an excellent choice.

And although he has said that Israeli’s expressed grave reservations over The Green Brigade 7 October banner, and the flying of a PFLP flag, he recognises the anger of other supporters towards those things and the statements and actions of the club, apparently in response to them. That, he says, has a made a difference to observers over there; they know this was a tiny minority and is not representative of Celtic as a whole.

In fact, Levy actually proposed an interesting reason why Celtic are a lot more respected in Israel than a lot of people seem to think, and remember, he lives and works there and so he knows that there’s a lot more to this than the likes of McGowan think.

“People have certain opinions about us as Israelis, but we identify with the underdog point of view, and we really connect with this idea,” he said. “We tend to feel that all the world is against us, and that is very similar in a way to what Celtic fans represent in a certain way within the UK.”

He doesn’t believe that Abada will be rushing for the exit door. Indeed, he talked about those very things that I did yesterday; courage and mental strength. Abada, he says, has both. He also says that Israelis will consider two things when looking at Abada’s time at Celtic; does he seem mentally and spiritually content, and is the club good for his career?

The first will be obvious; if the club continues to give him the love and the fans continue to get behind him and show him that he’s valued and even idolised by sections of the support that will be all he needs to put him in his happy place … and Levy says that people back home will respect that and honour that. A very sensible, and sober, assessment.

The other part is trickier; a lot of people surrounding Liel Abada do not believe Scottish football is a fitting stage for someone of his talents, and that’s a different problem with a different solution; we have to look credible in Europe next season. If we’re in the reformatted Champions League that will be a minimum of eight games on that stage for him and that will go a long way towards convincing people that he’s in the right place.

My one quibble with what Levy said is that he mischaracterises – or at least I hope he does – the overall views of The Green Brigade towards the Israeli state; he seems to believe that there is a section of the Celtic support which does not want to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. This is because of the Resistance banner and the PFLP flag, but he makes a mistake if he thinks that such things translate into some wide-ranging view that Israel should be erased from the map.

In any case, he doesn’t ascribe that mindset to the support as a whole or to the club itself, so I think it comes out as a very fair and very reasonable assessment of Celtic and Liel’s position at Parkhead.

Israeli’s, he said, were initially furious at what The Green Brigade did but he pointed out that feelings have softened since amidst the recognition that there is complexity here … complexity, for McGowan and those who don’t believe in such a thing, or at least can’t apply themselves to it.

I think McGarry did an excellent job here, and has presented the story very well. No sensationalism, no headline-grabbing, he interviewed a moderate rather than some hard-liner which the rest of the media would have ate up and piggybacked on.

No, McGarry has shown what good journalism is here.

It’s an excellent piece and it actually shines an even harsher line on McGowan’s sensationalist trash. I commend him for it and urge all Celtic fans to read it, which you can do at the link in the first paragraph.