France play Israel this evening in an international football match in Paris. The venue is the Stade de France although the French sports daily, L’Equipe, has said that the stadium has been transformed into ‘a bunker’.Last week dozens of Israeli football fans were attacked in a series of co-ordinated ambushes in Amsterdam by what the Dutch authorities described as ‘antisemitic hit-and-run squads’. Many of the assailants referenced the conflict in Palestine as they kicked and punched their victims. France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, this week declared that moving the match to a neutral location was never considered. ‘France doesn’t back down,’ he said. ‘France, the Republic doesn’t submit, especially to hatemongers’. He also urged Israel fans to attend the match, assuring them of their safety.As well as the close protection unit travelling with the Israeli squad to and from the Stade de France this evening, there will be 4,000 police officers on duty inside and outside the stadium. There will also be 1,600 stewards deployed for the match.Israel has advised its fans not to travel to the match, and many French supporters have been put off by the prospect of disorder. Liverpool and Real Madrid fans were attacked in 2022, when they attended the Champions League final at the venue. Many were mugged and sexually assaulted outside the ground, not, as the French government claimed in the immediate aftermath, by English fans, but by locals and the inhabitants of a nearby migrant camp.Anti-Semitism is now out of control in France, as Bruno Retailleau explained in an interview on Tuesday evening. ‘I’m going to quote you a terrifying figure,’ he told viewers. ‘Our Jewish compatriots make up less than 1 per cent of the French population, yet they are the victims of 57 per cent of all acts of anti-religious hatred.’Happily pro-Palestinian support and protests at football matches do not seem to have taken hold in the UK.However the bewildering support Palestinians get in the UK in general has given rise to an increase in antisemitic attacks.Let's hope our football authorities, the police and the Government keep this insidious rise in Palestinian and Arabic protest from corrupting our politics and society in general, as seems to be happening in France, by taking a similar firm stand.
John Hawkes ● 42d