Palestine, the IRA, and a Soccer Team's Solidarity

On July 22, 2014, 40,000 Celtic supporters gathered at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh to watch Celtic face off against Icelandic side KR Reykjavik in a second round Champions League qualifying match. Celtic cruised to a 4-0 victory, but the main story from the match was not on the pitch, but in the stands. Celtic supporters waved Palestinian flags throughout the match, earning the club a fine from UEFA.

This is not the first time that Celtic fans have shown their support for the Palestinian people. During Celtic's long and rich history, Celtic ultras and enthusiasts have waved Palestinian flags and displayed pro-Palestinian banners.

The solidarity of Celtic supporters with Palestine made for a wave of headlines in Arabic media when Celtic played Spanish giants Barcelona in a 2012 Champions League group stage match. Celtic followers waved Palestinian flags after it was revealed that Barcelona hosted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit—who had been held captive for more than five years by Hamas before being freed in a prisoner exchange—at a match at Camp Nou against rival Real Madrid earlier in the season.

In fact, the 45-time Scottish champions have even gone against their own players when it comes to the issue of supporting Palestine. During this summer's war between the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Nir Bitton, a 23-year-old Israeli midfielder on Celtic, uploaded a picture on his Instagram account showing support for Israeli troops fighting in Gaza. The photo caused an uproar among Celtic fans and hundreds of them went to social media and called for Celtic management to terminate Bitton's contract. While the fans have since embraced Bitton as their starting midfielder, they made clear supporting the IDF is something they won't readily brook.

How could supporters from a club that is thousands of miles away from the Middle East have so much interest and solidarity for Palestine?

Sean Huddleston, a university lecturer in Scotland and an avid supporter of Celtic believes the answer has to do with Celtic supporters' historical identification and understanding of Palestinian issues.

"The more Republican inclined Celtic supporter will feel affinity with the Palestinian cause due to the perceived links between the Irish Republican and the Palestinian struggle."

"With regards to supporting nationalism and liberation, the more overt supporters of the Palestinian cause that you would see at Celtic Park would be inclined towards being supportive of other left-centre, revolutionary struggles in a global sense anyway," says Huddleston.

Many of the Celtic supporters who Huddleston is referring to are sympathetic to the Irish republican Army and believe that the IRA's fight against the British is similar to what Palestinians are going through with Israel. The IRA viewed the British as the occupiers of Northern Ireland as the Palestinians view Israel as the occupiers of Palestine.

"Although Celtic as a club is formally a non-political institution, its origins are intimately bound-up in the Irish struggle," says Sean O'Congaile, a former IRA member who spent 15 years in the infamous H-Blocks prison in Northern Ireland for being a protesting Republican. "Were it not for the Irish famine and the political circumstances that existed in Ireland during the mid-late 1800s, it is unlikely Celtic FC would exist as it does today.

"Indeed, today Celtic continues to draws its support predominantly—but not exclusively—from the antecedents of the Irish Catholic diaspora [to Scotland] who left Ireland during the Great Hunger. Thus there is an organic connection with Ireland that goes back over several generations and there is a natural affinity with the politics of Ireland on the terraces of Celtic Park."

O'Congaile, a loyal Celtic supporter, went on to explain why a Celtic fan would draw a parallel between Ireland's struggle for independence and Palestine's current conflict with Israel.

"Because of the open identification with Ireland's struggle for independence and the IRA, a politicized Celtic supporter will almost inevitably draw correlations with those others who we regard as suffering an injustice analogous to that suffering by the Irish people. In this case we regard Palestine as an obvious parallel: the confiscation of land, the planting of settlers, the repressive legislation, and the excessive military force used to uphold these injustices."

The parallel goes well beyond the local team. Celtic's hometown Glasgow city council decided to raise a Palestinian flag over the city chambers during this summers' Operation Protective Edge. Clearly, that UEFA fine won't give the Celtic community any pause as they display the Palestinian flag alongside the Irish tricolour.