You know what really bugs me?

I've heard a few people (inrterestingly mainly Irish) trying to defend it as being Anti Zionist rather than anti Semetic. I must say I don't buy that at all - if you want to protest about Zionist policies do it outside the Israeli embassy. Make this gesture outside a Synagogue or, even worse, a Holocaust memorial and for me it becomes anti semetic.

I do agree with HTID's intial comment though - it's very sad that kick it out have not condemned this in the same way as they have with other issues. As for the Society of Black lawyers who made such a play over the Y word issue at White hart Lane......

 

why would it be racist to have a society of white lawyers or white police, I dont understand because I try to see things equally

 

I am not sure you have this right H. All my family are Spurs fans. They have been known as (perjoratively) jew-boys going back a very long way. Opposition fans turned to the term yid relatively recently but Arsenal have never had a Jewish connexion. Spurs fans who were proud of the Jewish connexions refused to accept it as a term of abuse so adopted it positively. Yiddish people have no reason NOT to be proud and not to let nasty bigots make the word and term go down the way the N word has gone. I support them and applaud those who wear the yid badge with pride. I hope you could find a way of doing so too and the Yiddish people have every right.

 

I'd dispute the point that Arsenal don't have a Jewish connection.

 

I have no experience of Jewish people personnally but if Nicholas Annelka made a deliberate action to offend in racial or religious way to anybody he needs to be outlawed. I read of the comparison to Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra and the punishment of Suarez. The Suarez and Evra chapter started private between them and grew the punishment was one level. In something completely public like Annelka made, even if not aimed at anybody personally, should gain a bigger punishment.

 

Mrs H-F is an Arsenal season ticket holder and I can assure you that there is a strong Jewish connection with the club.

 

Great stuff being written in this thread, very informative.

 

To be fair I don't know much about it.

Why would Anelka do it if he is black and it is an anti-Jewish sign?

(Sorry, showing my ignorance a bit here, obviously if it is racist it is wrong)

 

I am reading all of these posts, they are teaching me so much about something I didn't know existed until Anelka did what he did! I see he is now asking the FA to lift the charge against him, I think it is slowly dawning on him that he is likely to get a ban for long enough to effectively end his playing career!

I am old enough to remember all his childish tantrums when he first started playing for Arsenal, if he gets a lengthy ban, I would call it karma!

 

I see on BBC website that Msr Cuckierman, head of the french organisation CRIF ( Representative Council of Jewish institutions ), is saying that Anelka's quinelle could not be considered anti-semitic.

Are there now more than one possible intrepretations of this gesture?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25845493

 

I must admit i thought they did - funnily enough more of my Jewish friends and colleagues support Arsenal and QPR than they do Spurs! One supports Chelsea which i find completely nuts.

 

As do I that someone's religion should have any bearing on which football team they support!!

Being an atheist, football is my religion....

 

BB - I would usually wholeheartedly agree but given the type of chants from Chelsea fans in particular in the 80s I just found it a bit incomprehnsible.

 

Can someone explain how Nicols Anelka can make a gesture with a very obvious intention and the gesture even has a name, then use this name to say his gesture is not what I meant.

As I understand Anelkas said roughly "My quenelle was not the racist or anti-semitic quenelle, it was the other one." What other one and why do this if it could be misunderstood?

 

It seems that it's meaning can depend upon the context in which it is used, is fairly common in France and has been for years - if this is to be believed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_(gesture). Slightly amusing really - the gesture is purported to represent 'how far up your arm is up your bottom', indicating how much of a joke you think something is.

Unfortunately, as is all too common, some idiots took it a step too far....


Personally, I don't find gestures too insulting - this is the sort of thing that upsets me more http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25855325?. Beggars belief in this day and age really.

 

You live and learn - I had always thought that Spurs had a fairly unique Jewish connexion due to their proximity to Golders Green

I don't think religion leads to support of the likes of Spurs but certainly Celtic and Rangers are strongly connected by their religious "divide"

Because he is daft? I liked David Baddiel's comment about Anelka saying it was not anti-Jewish but pro his friend Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala - and so support of a racist thug is supposed to be so much more acceptable!!

That is a whole different ball game - but I suspect you would find a Nazi salute gesture very insulting

 

Again, it all comes down to the context. Basil Fawlty didn't insult me in the least...

 

but there has to be an exception to every rule

 

I have to admit I didn't really know what Anelka's gesture mean't but from what is said on here it is offensive, out of context and un-necessary. Having said this I do have concerns about how Israel behaves and it seems to me so many in this country and the USA are quick to defend Israel without putting themselves in the boots of the ordinary Palestinian people who are clearly suffering at the hands of people who should know better. This doesn't justify Anelka or any of the Nazi's or any other anti semetic yobbos but it might suggest that the imbalance of Western Government views is having a counter effect.

 

I think if you look carefully at what is happening in the middle east, you will see that the Palestinians are no more than pawns in the war between Israel and the Arab world. Let's be honest, if the Arab world wanted to help the Palestinians, they have enough land between them to give them a homeland, but they'd far rather use them as battle fodder and to keep the middle east wars going until Israel (no bigger than the size of Wales) is driven into the sea. If you speak to most ordinary Israelis, and Arab Israelis too, they would gladly help Palestinians if the rest of the Arab world didn't use their territories to tunnel arms into the West Bank and to attack Israel through the cover of the Palestinians.

in this discussion, there is only losers unfortunately...there will never be peace in the Middle East until there is no Israel...to me, that can't be a fair situation.