Former Labour MP George Galloway on Monday was fired as the host of the radio talk show “Unleashed,” for celebrating Liverpool beating Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 on Saturday night in the UK premier league with a tweet that read: “No #Israel flags on the Cup!” Sky News reported.
Galloway was suspended from the House of Commons in 2007, over his personal use of charity funds that “went beyond what was reasonable.” Then, in 2009, he declared in a speech at Trafalgar Square: “Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw Ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1943.”
The Guardian—not a newspaper where Hatikvah is played regularly—suggested that “the effect of repeating, again and again, that Israel is a Nazi state” was tantamount to an incitement to attack Jews.
A spokesperson for the radio station explained that Galloway’s show was cancelled with “immediate effect” in keeping with the policy of being a “fair and balanced news provider” that “does not tolerate anti-Semitic views.”
Tottenham Hotspur, based in north London, has been associated with the growing Jewish immigrant community that fled Russia to Britain in the late 1800s, and settled in the Tottenham area. To this day, Tottenham has a large Jewish fan base, which over the years has been subjected to anti-Semitic chants from rival fans, including the use of word “Yid” during matches. Spurs fans have responded by making the slur “Yid army” a show of their ethnic pride.
Galloway was thus cheering the outcome of the game because it meant no Jewish hands would get to touch the Cup. His full tweet read: “Congratulations to the great people of #Liverpool to the memory of the socialist miner #BillShankley to the fallen #96 to those who fought for justice for them and to the Liverpool dockers. No #Israel flags on the Cup!”
To which Liverpool’s chief of club and supporter liaison Tony Barrett responded: “Please don’t include Liverpool Football Club in this [expletive involving male bovine digestion]. It’s the club of Ronnie Rosenthal and Avi Cohen. It’s the club of Mo Salah and Sadio Mane. It’s the club of Parson Jackson and Bill Shankly (with no e).”
Yes, he corrected Galloway’s spelling of the name of the great Liverpool manager (1913-1981) and taught the anti-Semitic hack about Liverpool’s pride in its own Jewish and Muslim players: Haifa-born striker Ronny Rosenthal, a.k.a. Rocket Ronny; defender Avi Cohen (born in Cairo); Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah; and Senegalese winger Sadio Mané.
Galloway has worked for the Iranian state-run satellite television channel, Press TV since 2008, and in March 2011, he stated: “Because I don’t believe that the government of Iran is a dictatorship I have no problem about working for Press TV in London which is a British owned television station.”
So now we know.