Football must exercise caution if it is to mark this particular tragedy
In the midst of a cesspool of disinformation, football would be doing itself a favour if it keeps its opinions on the Middle East crisis to itself.
It is difficult to know how to feel, right now, and impossible to know quite what to believe. There was probably something inevitable about the fact that if you dropped Israel vs Hamas into the melting pot of unrestrained anger that the 21st century has become the outcome would be highly combustible.
And I'll level with you, what I've primarily felt these last five days has been fear of an entire planet which is continuing to career towards a cliff edge and with those in a position to put their foot on the brakes only putting them on the accelerator instead, and terrible, mind-melting sadness for those who’ve been killed, brutalised and displaced by the events of the last few days.
Social media is too corrupted to take seriously any more, Twitter in particular broken by a man whose motives for doing so remain as unclear as ever, but who has managed to take a platform which was at least invaluable at times of major incident and turning it into even more of a factory of hate and disinformation than it was before.
But if I have one football-related message to get out today, it’s this: when the weekend comes around, if thousands of players and thousands of supporters are expected to stand for a minute’s silence, then can we please be extremely careful about explaining what we’re expected to do so for?
Because much as everybody likes a simple ‘good vs evil’ narrative, the truth of the matter is that the story of what happens in this particular part of the Middle East is far more complex than something as broad stroke as football should be commenting upon, to any significant extent.
And you just know that the cogs are whirring at the moment. Football would like to think that it should pay its respects this weekend, and quite plausibly that it should do so lavishly. But the Football Association or whoever else is making these decisions needs to understand that they are potentially poking a hornet’s nest here and that there will be thousands, probably millions of people seeking to misinterpret what they say, whatever it is they do say. Don’t make it easy for them.
It’s not as simple as just swapping out the Ukrainian flags for Israeli ones because this is a very different conflict. We can mourn death without turning it into a political statement, especially when the politics of this particular subject are such a hot potato that they could conflagrate the entire planet.
My sympathy is with those who have been through unimaginable trauma in Israel this last few days, and with those undergoing it in Gaza and beyond, whether in the past or the present. And I will not remain silent unless those being mourned are representative of all those who always ending up paying the highest of prices because others are spoiling for a fight.
My sympathy is with the people just want to live in peace, to have a stable job that pays enough to live on, markets and shops that are stocked, healthcare, running water and the dignity of full human rights. Who don’t want to live with air-raid sirens, safe rooms, the whistling of rockets, talk of genocide and the practical reality of death just being another mundanity of everyday life.
I don’t know what the answer is, other than to reach inside ourselves to recall our own humanity. I’m far from convinced that it will be enough.