Yid Army win is a strange sort of victory ... call it 1-0 to the schmucks

NoTHINg the Oxford English Dictionary does ends up in the public domain by accident. No reporter is sat in the library like a naughty schoolboy looking up the rude words.

When the OED announces its updates there is a press release. This statement directs news sources to the good stuff, because the OED knows how to make a headline, too.

There is little mileage in releasing details of a couscoussier — ‘a steamer used to cook couscous, consisting of two interlocking pots, the upper one holding the couscous and having a lid and perforated bottom’ or a danfo — ‘a yellow minibus that carries passengers for a fare as part of an informal transport system in Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria.’

Nobody is even writing about the appearance of a w***stain, as controversial as that may be. They’re writing about Yids. It’s a big year for Jews in the

OED. Jewdar, Jewfro, Jew Town, even Jew York make it in. But the

OED really hit the jackpot when it redefined Yid.

There are a lot of old Jewish words in the 2020 edition but the introduction of kvetching — the Jewish word for complaint — or shticky, meaning gimmicky, would be a footnote in a national newspaper at best.

Taking Yid from the Jews, however, that’s a story. And sure enough, the OED have made all the bulletins with their classification.

yiddo, n.: A Jewish person. Also in extended use: a supporter of or player for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. See Yid n. 1, Yid n. 2.

See what they did there? They legitimised it — for everybody. There are no parameters set on its usage, no instruction manual or rules.

A Yid is a Tottenham fan. So now, when anyone announces, or sings in their thousands, that they hate the f****** Yids, it is no longer anti-Semitic.

Indeed, if you’re a follower of Arsenal or Chelsea or West Ham, Tottenham’s rivals in London, who doesn’t hate the f****** Yids? Everyone hates the Yids.

They feature in various versions of the song that starts with hating Nottingham Forest and takes in, depending on your location, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Leicester, West Ham United, Leeds, Arsenal — and Tottenham, or Tottenham Hotspur, if you’re trying to make the first or fourth line scan. And that was all fine, up to a point. There really is too much hate about at football grounds these days, but few seriously connected such a powerful emotion with that particular terrace ditty.

For a start, who outside the East Midlands really hates Forest? Yet there they are, first to be taken down in just about every version of the song. So it was a faux hate, a hate born of rhyme and the necessary scansion — and very different to the hatred known as anti-Semitism, which kills in the millions.

Yet those lines are blurred now and we have them all to thank: the cowards, the enablers, those who could have sent a very clear message about the road being travelled in one part of north London and chose not to.

The warning was there a year ago when Chelsea sat down with police to discuss the anti-Semitic element within their own fan

group. Chelsea were informed, to their immense frustration, that law enforcers did not consider the Tottenham chant ‘Yid army’ to be offensive, but instead a form of selfidentification — little different to arsenal fans calling themselves ‘Gooners’.

in that context, it was explained, any Chelsea supporter using the word ‘ Yid’ towards Tottenham fans would be considered to be talking about them as followers of Tottenham, not Jews.

only if a fan was to admit that, yes, he was motivated by racial hatred not rivalry, would action be taken. at this point — and the development was publicised, certainly in this column — Tottenham’s board should have taken stock.

it was obvious the direction this was now heading, the dreadful normalisation that was about to take place.

Yet Tottenham now have 60,000 chanting about Yids at home games and that’s a significant number to challenge, when in need of their money and support. Far easier to turn a blind eye. There is a phrase for this type of action, of course. a proper bottle job.

it was, coincidentally, how rachel riley described a Tottenham defeat at West Ham in 2017, causing outrage among many of the same Tottenham fans who see no problem when shouting about Yids.

riley, who is Jewish, did not renew her contract with Sky after making this mild criticism and described the online abuse she received as hideous.

So there was a moment when Tottenham could have stepped in, when the sirens were sounding after the Chelsea meeting, and they ducked it.

Now they are upset at the way the OED has made their club the gateway to anti- Semitic abuse.

Tottenham issued a statement this week condemning the definition. Too late. it’s done. The club facilitated it, the board facilitated it, all those who lacked the courage to make a stand facilitated it.

Cue many of the same fans who found a disparaging word from riley so offensive advancing the specious defence of reclamation.

Tottenham fans call themselves Yids, apparently, in response to the anti-Semitism directed at their historically Jewish fan base.

and this would have credibility if the ‘Yid army’ chants were only heard during matches against Chelsea or West Ham, rival clubs whose fans have often been guilty of antiSemitism during games against Tottenham.

Yet ‘Yid army’ and various related songs are heard at all Tottenham games, no matter the opposition.

They will be heard next week, against rB Leipzig, just as they were when Borussia Dortmund visited, despite German football taking a hugely proactive stance against anti- Semitism and Germany having some of the toughest laws on hate speech in Europe. So who is ‘Yid’ being reclaimed from in an environment where anti-Semitism is absent, but a majority of gentiles are not? The only people singing about Yids then are Tottenham fans.

David Baddiel, the comedian who has long campaigned on this subject, said that he was told by one Tottenham supporter: ‘ F*** off, it’s our word now.’

and according to the OED, and even the police, it is.

‘Jews are not even allowed to own their own hate,’ said Baddiel, almost forlornly.

So they win. The Yid army wins, Daniel Levy wins, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle wins — and is ‘ proud to be a Yiddo’, apparently — but also the ones who hate the f****** Yids.

They win, too, for they can say just that now, free from arrest and with some of our finest scholars and high-profile members of the Jewish community on their side.

Funny sort of victory, though, isn’t it? one- nil to the schmucks, you might say.