The media is determined to create the impression that Liel Abada and Celtic are facing a bitter parting of the ways. He may be going at the end of this campaign, but that isn’t certain, but if it does happen it will not be because people are banging the drum for him to do it.
It will be because the player and the club have talked it all out and come to a decision that his career plan has changed and it is no longer compatible with his remaining here.
Ababa is in a weird spot here, and amongst the most horrible I’ve seen one of our players put in. And it stinks to high heaven as far as I’m concerned that it’s his nationality which has put him there and that there is a small segment of our support which seems to want to hold him responsible for the sins of his country. I want to grab these morons and scream in their faces that he’s a footballer not a cabinet minister and he’s never been particularly outspoken or political.
Where some people get the idea that he’s in some kind of huff with our fans and our club, I do not know. But the handful of goons on social media who are determined to hate on this kid are giving the media every weapon they need to keep on pushing that narrative and I am increasingly furious with these people and the rubbish they are talking.
One theory, that he was trying to throw the game the other day, is so absolutely mind bending and moronic that I wanted to scream reading it.
Who actually believes stuff like that? What do you have to have going on in your own life for your brain to come up with that reflexively?
You need to be a hateful bastard to think that way do you not?
That a bad pass from the guy and that is the first thing that pops into your head?
Christ almighty.
There are extremists in his own country who are trying to force them to leave Celtic with all sorts of crazy talk emanating from some members of his national team.
The perception that we are an anti-Israeli club is not just rubbish, it is dangerous rubbish that we cannot allow to be perpetuated. Yes, I would vote to ban the Israeli national team from international and continental club competitions, but this guy wears our colours, he is our footballer and he deserves our support.
If there are people out there who can’t bring themselves to give it to him then they are also extremists and I would suggest the stadium might be better if they weren’t in it for a while, because Abada is more a part of the fabric than they are because he gets something about Celtic that they don’t; we do not discriminate. We are a club open to all.
For God’s sake get behind this lad.
If his head seems to be a bit all over the place right now, that might be because he has more on his mind than just football and that’s completely understandable.
The pitch is his safe space, it’s where he can focus on nothing else but the ball and as long as he there, and wearing our colours, he should never have to feel less than loved.
I think one of the reasons Abada doesn’t go to the Celtic fans at the end of games to celebrate is because the press would try and get a picture of him celebrating in front of the Palestine flag.
Good thinking actually mate yes.
They’re evil – and that’s exactly what the media would do as you say Andy…
And they’d punt the pictures all over Israel to cause all sorts of extremists to detest Liel Abada –
Maybe it’d be worth considering keeping the flag at home until the player departs Celtic !
James he’s a young boy trying to do his best, as you say on the field is his safe place, so give the bhoy all the support and let him know he is part of the the celtic family and don’t let the knuckle daggers get him down, he is only a young lad
Abada has been great for Celtic and vice versa.
But if his heart and head aren’t in the right place then he should not be in the starting eleven.
At the moment he is not worthy of a starting spot.
Obviously if he is selected today l will be delighted if he proves me wrong.
Your a breath of fresh air James. Some of the drivel written elsewhere is rank rotten. Keep supporting the young man.
The Celtic supporters, the real Celtic supporters, should get right behind him from now until the season’s end, chanting his name for the duration of tomorrow’s and in particular next week’s home game and every game thereafter. We should drown out any idiots that think otherwise but in particular let the guy know that actually we appreciate and respect him.
Anything less allows the nonsense coming from the idiots out there in our support and at his national team and citizen level as an Israeli. HH
For the purposes of argument, let’s assume Abada reads your piece. So you would ban his country from international sports participation? Well, that will make him feel right at home!
Nothing has been said that indicates Abada is not a proud Israeli. We may as well accept that Israeli footballers will not feel comfortable at our club, now, and for the foreseeable future.
To label them extremists is perhaps to imbue them with some collective purpose, some coherent argument, when in fact they are just the usual hard of thinking, ‘we all have equally valid opinions’’ brigade, who can’t think before they speak, and only do black and white. They can’t grasp that a footballer playing football, is not a political expression, but actually just someone making a living, presumably doing what they love, not an endorsement of a genocidal regime, or indeed any kind of statement about the people who just happen to run his country of birth.
Liel Abada has given his all for Celtic, like wise has Nir Bitton. I’m sorry to see the GB flying the Palestinian flag, knowing all too well it affects one of our players to the core. We have to face it though, the majority of the GB are young Bhoys, and it’s all they’ve known as a world conflict is the sr between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. So as Celtic supporters they take the side of the oppressed, like we have been as Catholics growing u in Scotland, sometimes we felt like a minority.
Jake Wallis Simons (The Telegraph; 11/02/24): “In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered up 94pc of the West Bank, with 6pc of Israeli land added to make up the difference; sovereignty over East Jerusalem, making it the capital of a Palestinian state; an Israeli withdrawal from the Old City of Jerusalem, which would be under international administration; a tunnel connecting the West Bank and Gaza, ensuring Palestinian territorial contiguity; and Israel accepting a thousand Palestinian refugees annually for five years, with financial compensation provided for the rest.”
“Does the international community really believe that a new state of Palestine would miraculously become the only democracy among the 22 autocracies of the Arab world? That the Palestinians would leave their corruption and Israelophobia at the door? That such a development would end the cycle of bloodshed? As Bellow concludes: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”