What can I possibly say to persuade my fellow football fans?
A state which drove so many of its population away (the Palestinians) and which bombed their refugee camps in the Lebanon.
A state with more nuclear weapons than Britain, which sold arms to apartheid S.Africa and became its closest military ally.
A state which has, on its border, the world's largest prison camp, namely Gaza, and which only last year it bombed and devastated with impunity killing over 2000 citizens.
A state supported by the West in its global strategy to police the Middle East : a vital ally.
A state that created the very conditions in which its arch-enemy Hamas could thrive, because it consistently refused to negotiate a settlement with secular left-wing Palestinian representatives.
A state which plays football in Europe because it wishes to maintain a veneer of normality and respectability.
Democracy, like Britain in n. Ireland, is totally irrelevant.
A so-called democratic state can also operate as a police state. And football, as with any other area of society, is subject to that.
The case of Mahmoud Sarsak goes back to 2009, but has been repeated many times since.
Only last May the entire Palestine Olympic football team were detained for a period.
But if you examine the experiences of Sarsak, it shows perfectly how Israel operates.
For propaganda purposes it boasts about its own team comprising players of different religions.
That is not the point.
The point is that Palestinian footballers are and have been treated with utter degradation, in a similar way that Britain used to treat Irish people (think of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six).
To detain someone without trial merely on suspicion ; to keep that person incarcerated for three years as he claimed political status and went on hunger strike....... all these features are much closer to Britain's own recent history than we'd care to admit.
Israel does operate a form of apartheid, just as racist as the regime in South Africa once did.
Palestinians are treated as second class citizens in their own land on every level and football is no exception.
I was proud to march with the pro-Palestine demo in Cardiff yesterday before the game v. Israel.
I was extremely disappointed to miss such a game, but some things really are more important and the need to expose the terrorist Israeli state is paramount.
Of course, as so many speeches at the rally argued, it's fundamental that a boycott of Israel becomes as far-reaching as the Anti-Apartheid Movement once was.
As Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Chair and Merthyr singer-songwriter Jamie Bevan said in his speech - ' It's not about religion, it's about people and their suffering....it's about imperialism.'
At the demo I kept seeing the name 'Sarsak', without knowing its significance.
Celtic fans, as we entered the park near CCFC Stadium, sported it and it was on several other banners.
I decided to find out and wrote this as a result :-
BALLAD OF MAHMOUD SARSAK
The great Bill Shankly once said
'Football's not a matter of life and death,
it's much more important than that!'
He was so right, but also wrong,
just look at Mahmoud Sarsak.
All he wanted was to play football
for clubs of his country Palestine,
but he was arrested by the Israelis
while on his way to a game ;
they claimed he was a jihadi.
Detained for 3 years under autocratic laws,
shamocracy like the Wee Six once was,
Sarsak was imprisoned and abused
without even a hint of evidence;
while Netanyahu said politics and sport don't mix.
On hunger strike as a protest
when fellow footballer Issa died on release,
Sarsak lost half his body weight
and still they force-fed him in the cell ;
like Sands he proclaimed ' I'm no criminal!'
Three years of total deprivation
with only rolled-up paper at his feet,
Mahmoud Sarsak returned to Gaza
and though he'd lost so much of himself,
his name was a roar at oppressor's defeat.
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