A Championship winner doesn't buy a free pass for cheerleading atrocities
On Sunday, the Republic of Ireland made the misguided decision to play their Nations League game against Israel. By doing so they afforded their opponents a sporting stage to promote Israeli state messaging. Only Gavin Bazunu placed himself on the right side of history by refusing to take part.
People will argue that football and politics shouldn't mix, but those people usually mean politics they don't like and football shouldn't mix. You can bet your bottom dollar that Israel absolutely would've used this game for political ends had they won.
Thankfully, Israel wasn't able to propagandise a victory over one of their most ardent international critics; a pathetically weak display saw them defeated 3-0.
🇮🇪💪 Ireland thumped Israel in their clash, and Jack Moylan celebrated his goal pointedly after a fractious lead-in to the match 📺 WATCH short and extended @UEFA Nations League highlights via beIN SPORTS CONNECT 👉 https://t.co/vgsGj3JAaf pic.twitter.com/Z4qLgNwPAv
— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS_AUS) September 28, 2026
After the embarrassing loss Manor Solomon, sadly once a member of our great club (albeit only on loan), was interviewed:
"They don't interest me. We have a country 10 times better than theirs, stronger than theirs. We have an amazing country with amazing people.
"We're proud to wear the national team's uniform and to be Israelis; proud of our country and our soldiers. And they can pull all the stunts they want and do whatever they want. We are Israelis, we love our country – and that's how it will always be."
Big words for such a tiny, little man.
Naturally these shameful comments generated a lot of reaction from fans, and with his history at Leeds, many of those fans were our own.
The Republic of Ireland beat Israel 3-0 in a UEFA Nations League match in Hungary on Sunday, despite calls for a boycott.
— AJE Sport (@AJE_Sport) September 28, 2026
Ireland's players wore black armbands in support of Palestinians killed in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/bUf6IiGm6G
Plenty of Leeds fans dismissed the comments for what they were: a small-minded loser, with a victim's mentality, desperately lashing out after being roundly humiliated.
However, as is always the case of the cesspit that is Musk's Twitter, not everyone agreed.
Some supporters suggested that those calling out Solomon are hypocrites because we celebrated his winner against Plymouth that sealed the Championship trophy. Ah, yes, a football player once did something good for us so we must support him in all future endeavours. Utter fucking nonsense.
Then there's the "we're........proud of our country and our soldiers" remarks. "Well, why wouldn't he be proud of the country he's from?" came the predictable reply from those desperately looking to throw their support behind Solomon.
Of course people can be proud of where they're from, but that doesn't mean blindly supporting your government and its soldiers who are committing atrocities. I'm proud to be Scottish, but I wouldn't gleefully happy-clap if a despotic regime in Holyrood were raining bombs down on the heads of innocent civilians.
There's nothing patriotic about what Solomon said. Patriotism is about striving for your country to be the best version of itself, even if that means going against the state narrative. Real patriots are rarely government boot-lickers.
Finally, the usual go-to accusation was unveiled: antisemitism. Apparently, suggesting that Netanyahu's administration shouldn't carry out genocide means you're a rabid Jew-hater. Again, utter fucking nonsense. Never mind the fact that Netanyahu's own ministers, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, have openly used genocidal rhetoric; we are told that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic.
What is truly antisemitic is conflating the actions of an Israeli government with all Jewish people. Unfortunately, Netanyahu and his hard-line supporters (both Jewish and non-Jewish) use the antisemitism accusation as a cloak to shroud themselves from legitimate scrutiny.
It's been unfortunate to see fellow Leeds fans parroting these lines while attacking other supporters.
Some have even invoked the names of important Jewish figures to try and deflect from Solomon's post-match drivel; figures who were instrumental in both Leeds United and the city as a whole. I fail to see how those Jewish people have any relevance to what the current Israeli government is doing. That is antisemitism.
Manor Solomon's minor legacy at Leeds has a habit of re-entering our consciousness. Whether it's the controversy around that fucking awful song we started, or because he's said something abhorrent, there's always some Leeds fan out there who is all too happy to jump to his defence. It's time we left the memory of his time at Leeds where it belongs: in the fucking bin.
