Last weekend, Glasgow’s two rival soccer teams—the Celtic and the Rangers—faced off for the first time this season. Such a match-up occurs a few times every year, and is invariably accompanied by the waving of Israeli and Palestinian flags. Jacob Judah explains:
At Celtic and Rangers games, Irish tricolors and British Union Jacks are so common that they are accepted and immediately recognized as substitutes for the clubs’ own banners.
Several Scottish teams have historical ties to local Protestant and Catholic communities, a product of over a century of sectarianism. Celtic, founded in 1887 by destitute Irish Catholic immigrants, has remained deeply attached to its Irish roots and its fans have historically been linked to political causes, protesting against anti-Catholic discrimination in Scotland and supporting Irish political autonomy.
Many Celtic fans feel deep solidarity with causes across the Irish Sea and among some, especially the few-hundred strong in the vocal Green Brigade fan group, there is a perceived parallel between Irish nationalism and Palestinian liberation. (Pro-Palestinian sentiment is very widespread in broader Irish society and its government.)
“There is this grouping that has this narrative that Celtic is all about Irish republicanism and that they speak for Celtic,” said Lord Ian Livingston, a Jewish member of Britain’s parliament and a former Celtic board member. . . . In Glasgow, the Green Brigade has raised thousands of pounds for Palestinian charities and since 2019 has supported a soccer academy in the West Bank, called Aida Celtic, based at the Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. Livingston, a member of the Conservative party, was seen as a controversial executive among the team’s liberal fanbase, and he resigned from the team in 2017 in response to fan pressure.
When Celtic fans began adopting Palestinian flags in the late 2000s, at the Rangers’ Ibrox stadium—where a portrait of the Queen stares down at players in the home team’s dressing room—the knee-jerk response among some fans was to hoist Israeli flags among the Union Jacks and Northern Irish crosses.
Read more on JTA: https://www.jta.org/2022/08/25/sports/why-scotlands-fiercest-soccer-rivalry-features-israeli-vs-palestinian-flags