Shaphan

Arsenal FC's links to child abuse, destruction of Lebanon

[This is a follow-up to a previous post, Israel's Arsenal and Arsenal's Israel's, about Arsenal FC's sponsorship deals with Dubai's al-Maktoum crime syndicate family and with the Israeli Tourism Ministry, neither of which I, as an Arsenal supporter, could approve.]

On Wednesday, September 13th, Arsenal FC played Hamburg SV in the Champions' League in Hamburg, winning 1-2.  Because both clubs are sponsored by Emirates Airline, Arsenal's logo was, as a one-off, changed to read 'Dubai'.

The following day it was reported that:

Dubai's ruler has been accused of enslaving thousands of young children for camel races in a class-action lawsuit filed in the US.

The action claims Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, his brother Hamdam and 500 others are responsible for abducting and trafficking the children. (..)

The children were said to be from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia.

Once in Dubai, it is claimed that the children - some of them as young as two - were kept in poor conditions, starved (so as to keep their weight down), abused and forced to take part in a dangerous sport.

It's only a lawsuit, which has yet to be tried in court;  on the other hand, it's the first stage towards a conviction.  UAE/Dubai bans political parties and voting, its mosques are state-controlled and the internet is censored.  If the Maktoums are also involved in child abduction, abuse and enslavement, I doubt whether the Arsenal board could care less (unless, of course, it led to bad publicity).

Meanwhile, Arsenal FC continues to be cagey about its dirty dealings with the Israeli Tourism Ministry (it's a topic never reported on its website).  The idea, as I understand it, was to send planeloads of Gooners to act as human shields for the Zionist regime.  Well, the Jerusalem Post reported on September 6th that,

The Tourism Ministry has delayed its advertising at Arsenal Football Club's new Emirates stadium fearing that a campaign promoting Israel might create negative sentiment in the UK after the war in Lebanon, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

"It was a mutual decision as we felt it wasn't the right time to start the campaign," Uzi Gafni, director of the Israeli government tourist office in the UK and Ireland told the Post. "Given how Israel was portrayed in the British media through the war, we felt it better to wait until the cease-fire agreement was secure, that Israel was out of the limelight for a while, before starting the promotions for fear of a negative reaction by the public here." (..)

For now, however, a visit to www.arsenal.com confirms that Israel remains absent from the football club's impressive list of sponsors.

Gafni said that Tourism Ministry representatives were scheduled to meet with Arsenal around mid-September and that the campaign should kick off at the club's home game on September 23 against Sheffield United.

He added that the government had received assurances that it would be compensated for the time lost on the deal.

The club said in response: "Arsenal is jointly evaluating with the Israel Tourist Board the position with regards to our relationship."

So, not only did Arsenal receive money from the Israeli Tourism Ministry, the club is also going to pay back money to the ITM as a result of the Israeli government's unjust assault on Lebanon and Hezbullah.  I can see what the Zionist regime gets from the deal - but, apart from a heap of trouble, I can't see what benefit Arsenal gets from it whatsoever (except for those who are called to be human shields, for they will get a discount).

PS  Note the JP report's choice of words, "the government had received assurances that ...", which makes explicit that this is a deal between Arsenal FC and the Israeli government.

Addendum:  A (rather shrill) 'Boycott Israel' website has a 'Boycott Arsenal' campaign too.  It adds this information to what I already knew.

The televised ads will reach audiences of up to 700 million in an estimated 198 countries.  The Israeli Tourism Ministry will also receive intellectual property rights, the use of the team logo and the right to use photos of the team and its players in ads.  For an additional fee, Arsenal players will also appear in the ads.[3]

The deal doesn't stop with promoting Israel but actually grants Israel a physical presence in the stadium.  The Israeli Tourism Ministry can use the stadium's banquet hall twice a year and can organize an exhibition at the end of the playing season.[3]  The stadium will also feature permanent sales tables for t-shirts.[4]

(Not) Sporting Israel

Liverpool FC is playing Maccabi Haifa, in Haifa Tel Aviv, in the European Champions League in August.  Rafa's not happy, and it's likely to be re-located.  But the point is, why are Israeli teams playing in our Champions League?  Is Israel a European country?  No, it's in Asia, so why, to take another example, was Israel in the European zone (Group D) for the FIFA World Cup?  Why, in tennis's Davis Cup, does Israel play in the Europe-African zone, instead of being in the Asia/Oceania zone? 

Last century, the Zionists, from Europe and America, claimed by force, of their own volition, land in western Asia.  They chose to insert themselves in that site in Asia.  They chose their Asian neighbours.  They chose to displace the Semitic-speaking people who already lived there (at a time when they, the Zionists, still spoke Yiddish, a Germanic language of the Indo-European lineage).

One of the many causes for this current, disastrous war against Hezbullah was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's words about Israel.  The Zionists (in Israel, DC and London) hate Ahmadinejad for trying to speak some truth to their power.  They want to silence him, permanently.  He makes people think.  He rattles the cognitive cages of westerners.   If he's allowed to continue, Europeans might start calling for the Zionists to return home, back to Exile (which is where God's chosen people are supposed to remain until the Messiah comes.   And, given current events in the Middle East, maybe their long exile might soon be over).

The Zionist state might not now be facing its end, had it learned to play football with its neighbours.

Fisking the Observer

It's not easy supporting Iran - nobody likes us and we're not much good.  At least, we weren't against Mexico, deservedly losing 1-3.  But neither Angola nor Portugal impressed much either, so all is not lost.  We're notoriously slow starters, anyway.

I'm not saying the media made us lose, but our cause was not helped by the incessant, polemical propaganda spewed out by western media against our players and, especially, our president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  A case in point was in yesterday's Observer, written by Luke Harding and Denis Campbell.  This was the lede:

Iran's Football [sic] team will be met with a series of protests across Germany during their World Cup campaign as anger mounts against the country's viciously anti-semitic President [sic], Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Senior politicians, Jewish groups and a prominent German TV host will join a demonstration today in Nuremberg hours before Iran play their opening match of the tournament against Mexico in the city.  They are furious that Ahmadinejad's deputy, Mohammad Aliabadi, has been allowed into the country after the Iranian President called the Holocaust 'a fairytale' and called for the destruction of Israel.

Let's unpack this.  Is Ahmadinejad "anti-semitic"?  No, of course not.  He's ardently pro-Palestinian;  the Palestinians are semitic;  ergo, he is evidently pro-semitic, at least sometimes.  What he is, though, is outspokenly anti-Zionist. (Some perceptive, orthodox Jews, a delegation from the anti-Zionist Naturei Karta sect , visited Iran in March this year, to show their support for Ahmadinejad. They said it was "a dangerous deviation to pretend that the Iranian president is an anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic personality.")

Did Ahmadinejad say the Holocaust was a 'fairytale'?  [How would I know?  I may support Team Melli - Irani Army! Irani Army! - but I don't speak or read a word of Farsi.- ed.]  I think Harding and Campbell may be deviating from the truth.  The word the president used, and keeps using, is translated as 'myth'.  Ironically, the person who did use the word 'fairytale', in English, in reference to Auschwitz specifically, was David Irving, who's now in an Austrian prison, serving time for a 15-year-old thought crime.  So, the Observer hacks are confusing Ahmadinejad's words with Irving's.  I wonder why.  And I could also be picky about the allegation that he called for the destruction of Isra-l.  He wants the Zionist colonists to leave Palestine - he is not threatening to physically destroy Isra-l, its people or infrastructure.

Harding and Campbell are not reporting facts - they are inciting hatred towards our president.  The Zionist propagandists are demonizing Ahmadinejad because they don't want people to think about the questions he's raising about Isra-l's history and existence.  Meanwhile, our footballers, none of whom, that I know of, are anti-semitic or vicious, are getting distracted from their task by all the programmed anti-Iranian demonstrations.  That's our excuse, anyway, and we're sticking to it.

I'm supporting Iran

I'm supporting Iran in the World Cup.  We're in Group D and should finish runners-up there.  Then it gets tougher - we'll be playing the winners of the 'group of death', C, Argentina, Holland, Serbia or Ivory Coast.  But that team will underestimate us, and be knackered, so it'll be on to the quarters, where we'll meet Germany.  Some of our best players play in the Bundesliga, and we'll have our president there in the stadium having a mystical experience, and Lehmann will get sent off for hitting someone, and lo and behold it's the semis.  (We really hope we are destined to meet, and beat, the Big Satan in this World Cup, just as we did eight years ago, but the draw has meant it has to be in either the semis, the final or the third-place play-off - that's a tough ask for them, but may A-lah ease their path through, so that we may humiliate them once again.)  Ali Karimi will be the tournament's outstanding player, for sure, and who could look beyond our captain, the phenomenal, venerable Ali Daei [Wikipedia], ending up top scorer?  Irani Army! Irani Army! Irani Army! 

If we do get knocked out early, then I'll stop being contrary and support the English Crusader Zionists, like I normally do.