(JTA) — A British soccer league has launched a campaign to urge fans to stop using anti-Jewish chants.
Premier League soccer teams are scheduled to screen the film "The Y-word" before a match on April 30, according to reports, as part of the "Kick It Out" anti-racism campaign to stop such chanting at soccer games. Y refers to Yid, a slang term for Jew.
Popular players Frank Lampard and Ledley King are featured in the one-minute film, which shows archival footage of fans of one club at train stations and on terraces chanting anti-Jewish and Nazi slogans such as “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz, Sieg Heil. Hitler’s going to gas them again. Yiddo.’’
The fans of three teams — Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham United — have been singled out as being the worst offenders when it comes to anti-Semitic chanting, according to Sky News. Some fans make hissing sounds to imitate the sound of the Nazi gas chambers, and some Tottenham Hotspurs fans call themselves the "Yid army."
"It’s simply to raise awareness that the y word is, and has been for many, many years, a race-hate word," David Baddiel, who made the film to serve as a talking point for fans, told Sky News. "It’s our belief that some football fans may not even realize this, and the film is designed therefore to inform and raise debate."
