Pro-Netanyahu billionaires don’t get to lecture Celtic fans.

There is a particular kind of intervention in public life which is so absurd, so overblown and so morally self-important that the first instinct is to laugh at it. The problem is that laughter does not quite cover the seriousness of what is being attempted here.

Sylvan Adams, the Israeli-Canadian billionaire and President of the World Jewish Congress Israel Region (and not the Congress itself, as has been erroneously claimed) has decided to insert himself into the Celtic managerial debate by accusing supporters of “pure, unadulterated bigotry dressed up as virtue” because many of them opposed Robbie Keane becoming Celtic manager after his time at Maccabi Tel Aviv.

That is an extraordinary charge. It is also a disgraceful one.

It’s also probably not great that he’s keeping company with Kris Boyd, the Village Idiot. When those are the kinds of people on your side, yeah, not great.

Nobody should be casual about accusations of bigotry. Nobody should throw them around like confetti. Nobody should use them as rhetorical hand grenades simply because a football support has taken a political and moral position they do not like.

Yet that is exactly what Adams has done.

Celtic supporters object to Robbie Keane because he chose to manage Maccabi Tel Aviv during one of the darkest and most horrifying periods in modern history, while Israel’s war in Gaza was being watched across the world in real time.

That is not “purity law.” That is not bigotry. That is political judgement.

Supporters are entitled to ask whether a man who made that choice is the right person to represent a club whose fanbase has long shown solidarity with Palestine. They are entitled to say that Celtic, of all clubs, should understand what it means when people identify with the dispossessed, the occupied and the brutalised.

They are entitled to say that this appointment would have ripped the club apart before a ball was kicked. And it would have, whether he or anyone else likes it or not.

Adams can disagree with that. He can defend Keane. He can argue that football people should not be judged by where they work. But he did not stop there. He reached straight for the dirtiest weapon in the armoury. He accused people of bigotry and dragged in the 1930s, Nazi Germany and Jesse Owens, as if Celtic supporters objecting to a football appointment were somehow marching down the road towards Berlin.

That is a pathetic argument. This doesn’t even rise to the level of a sophomore debating club. It is also grotesquely hypocritical coming from Sylvan Adams.

This is not a man who has spent his public life keeping politics out of sport. Quite the opposite. His own public profile describes him as a businessman and philanthropist committed to promoting Israel’s global image.

He calls himself Israel’s “self-appointed Ambassador-at-Large”, and how much of an arrogant tosser do you need to be to do that? He owns Israel-Premier Tech, the cycling team whose purpose, according to the World Jewish Congress profile, includes carrying “Israel’s good name around the world.”

So let us be very clear about this. Sylvan Adams does not object to politics in sport. He objects to politics in sport when the politics are not his.

He has spent years using sport, culture and celebrity to polish Israel’s image. He has backed major events, high-profile sporting projects and global showcases designed to present Israel as normal, modern, attractive and misunderstood. His own interviews have framed these efforts as cultural diplomacy, including the Giro d’Italia start in Israel, Madonna at Eurovision in Tel Aviv and football events involving Lionel Messi.

That is his right. But he does not then get to pretend that sport is some sacred neutral space being violated by Celtic supporters. He helped turn sport into a vehicle for Israeli state image-making. He helped make the shirt, the team, the race and the spectacle political. Now that supporters have noticed, he wants to call them bigots.

Sorry, but no. The Israel-Premier Tech story tells us everything we need to know. Adams built a cycling team with Israel in the name.

That team became a rolling embassy, a travelling symbol, a brand on wheels.

During the Gaza war, it became the focus of sustained pro-Palestinian protests, particularly at the Vuelta a España. Eventually the pressure became so great that the team announced it would change its name and move away from its Israeli identity. Adams also stepped back from day-to-day involvement.

That was not because cycling fans suddenly became infected with some strange hatred of bike frames. It happened because the team carried the name and symbolism of a state whose conduct had become morally radioactive to millions of people.

That is the point Adams cannot bear to face.

When he says Robbie Keane is being punished for “breathing Israeli air”, he is not making a serious argument. He is constructing a straw man so large you could use it as a bonfire. The issue is not that Keane once changed planes in Tel Aviv or ate hummus in Jaffa.

The issue is that he took a prominent football job at Maccabi Tel Aviv, stayed through a period of immense controversy, and now expects that choice to have no consequences when seeking work at a club whose supporters have one of the most visible pro-Palestinian traditions in European football.

Choices have consequences. That is not bigotry. That is life in the real world.

Adams also knows perfectly well that association matters. His whole public project is built on the power of association. Associate Israel with elite cycling. Associate Israel with Eurovision. Associate Israel with Madonna. Associate Israel with Messi. Associate Israel with glamour, excellence, normality and applause.

But when Celtic supporters associate Maccabi Tel Aviv with Israel, and Israel with Gaza, suddenly association becomes unfair. Suddenly judging public choices becomes sinister. Suddenly politics must stop at the dressing-room door.

There is another insult buried in his remarks.

Adams appears to assume Celtic supporters are too stupid to understand the difference between Jewish people and the Israeli state.

That is offensive. It is perfectly possible to oppose antisemitism absolutely while also opposing Israeli state policy, Israeli sporting normalisation and the laundering of political reputation through football.

I’ve covered this in an earlier article and I don’t feel any need to cover it in this one. As usual with those outside Scotland who think they have a right to comment on this club, this clown does it without understanding us at all.

Antisemitism is real. It is vile. It should be confronted wherever it appears. But using the charge of antisemitism or bigotry to shut down criticism of Israel does not protect Jewish people. It cheapens the accusation. It turns a grave moral issue into a public relations device.

That should offend everyone.

Celtic supporters have protested against Robbie Keane because they do not want their club used to normalise choices they find morally indefensible. They do not want a manager whose recent career path runs straight through Israeli football during the Gaza war. They do not want the board to pretend this is “just football” when everyone knows it is not.

Adams, of all people, should understand that.

He has spent years arguing that football, cycling and culture can carry political meaning. He has used them for that purpose. He has invested in that idea. He has made it part of his public identity. So, he can piss off if he thinks he can aim that charge at us.

The real issue here is that Adams believes his politics should travel freely through sport while everyone else’s should be banned at the gate.

That is the double standard.

He wants Israel promoted through sport, but not protested through sport. He wants Israeli identity carried around the world on jerseys, bikes and banners, but not challenged when that identity becomes controversial.

He wants cultural diplomacy without political accountability. He wants the benefits of association without the burden of consequence.

That is not how any of this works.

Robbie Keane is not being destroyed. His career is not over. He has managed in Israel and Hungary, won trophies, earned money and will almost certainly work again. The idea that Celtic supporters have somehow blacklisted him from world football is laughable. They objected to him managing Celtic. That is all.

They had every right to do so.

A football club is not just a workplace. Celtic is not just any club. It carries history, identity, memory and politics whether the board likes it or not. Its supporters have every right to care about what kind of person represents it.

They have every right to say that some appointments would be divisive beyond repair. They have every right to say no.

Sylvan Adams can rage about that all he likes. He can invoke the 1930s. He can wrap his argument in the language of tolerance while smearing an entire support. He can pretend this is about protecting football from politics.

He sounds like a prick, but he can do all that as he sees fit.

But the truth is simpler.

Celtic supporters did not politicise this issue. Robbie Keane’s choices did. Sylvan Adams’ own sports diplomacy project did. He built a world where sport carries political meaning.

And he is furious because our choices conflict with his. Well tough. The problem with so many people like this is that they believe their opinions are the only ones that matter. They don’t. This is a flea bite. He is out of his mind to think that we are in any way intimidated by this or any other opinion he holds. We could care less.

That doesn’t mean we won’t expose him as a hypocrite. That we can do.

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