A banner to honor everyday reds, from their fellow fans, should be fine. With that said, I can understand the strict treatment, as it is an emotionally charged situation.
The fact that there wasn’t equitable treatment for all messages is a miss, but I don’t see that as intentional, more an oversight.
It seems to have been specific people who were Liverpool fans that have died. I can only imagine that the authorities objected to the wording and saw it as somehow political but that takes some serious mental gymnastics.
This is what happens when the league offers some half-hearted guidance on what can be shown in a stadium and then expects a stadium security manager in Liverpool to be able to accurately interpret those rules minutes before the kick off the Merseyside derby.
I’m a little confused by the story though and I’m not sure I fully trust the source. Is this confirmed as being a true story? A quick scan of this guy’s profile and all I see is him attacking people and calling them ISIS supporters (or at least approvingly re-tweeting others who are doing that.
He also wrote this extensive post on Friday. It’s long and google translate doesn’t play well but the crux of it is that he has found himself wrestling with his support for Liverpool after he decided the club’s public message was not strong enough in it’s condemnation of Hamas.
So he writes a long post wrestling with the idea that the football club he likes might be anti-semitic and then 12 hours later gets a perfect justification of that concern when his innocent banner is removed by a “decision from higher up”? Very convenient indeed.
His own story, in the Express, also seems confused. At first it seems to say it was his friends banner and he heard it was taken from him but later he talks like it was his own banner and he was there. Seems a bit weird. Also the story in the Express mentions that the banner was allowed to be there until someone tried to hold it up, at which point the stewards asked for clearance for it to be held up and a security manager who hadn’t seen the banner said no. Possibly more of an issue of holding up a large banner that blocks other people’s view? We don’t know really because we only have the world of a clearly aggrieved and angry person who has recently decided the club he supports is anti-semitic.
Also, there are clearly words that are folded under the top of the banner so they currently can’t be read. We have no idea what those words say and if they make a political statement that forced the removal of the banner.
For argument’s sake I’ll assume that everything reported is true and there is nothing else to the story that may have contributed to this decision - at worst it’s a bad reaction by a staff member, who hadn’t seen the banner, a few minutes before kickoff of one of the biggest games of the year. Most likely a break down in communication over the contents of the banner and not a “decision from higher up” (clearly, in my opinion, worded to sound like the decision came from John Henry himself) to deny deaths of innocent Israelis.