Last week, one West Ham fan account on social media – using a tone that you are surely now familiar with – bemoaned those who “dragged politics into football” after a backlash to the signing of Israel international Manor Solomon from Tottenham Hotspur. Football is escape, guys. Can’t we just think of the 90 minutes?

Solomon does not just play for Israel. He has served in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) – Israel has national service – and has shared social media posts appearing to address his views on the war on Gaza. One post shared a report accusing Palestinians of killing their own children, falsely attributing an Israeli strike on a hospital to a “failed rocket launch by Islamist Jihad”. Solomon certainly does not keep politics out of football.

As it turns out, nor are a section of West Ham supporters. From the away end at Turf Moor on Sunday, a chant in favour of their new winger that includes the line “he hates Palestine”. Who’s doing the dragging into football now?

Let’s meet the first predictable retort head-on: Don’t take it so literally. Don’t take everything so seriously. We’re just having a laugh. Stop being so woke. Lighten up, it’s only genocide. If you can’t even refer to an aggression that has killed thousands of children, what is the world even coming to? Political correctness gone mad. Nothing is beyond the pale. Banter is the only guiding principle.

The chant is abhorrent now for the same reasons that it was abhorrent before. Let Leeds United explain: they first condemned that same song in 2024 and then – when it continued – increased CCTV surveillance and threatened banning orders. Leeds viewed anti-Palestine lyrics as “hate crime or discriminatory language” and they were correct.

To those who still require convincing, the chant is unacceptable because it infantilises a demonstrably awful event. One of the most heartbreaking elements of the attacks is the dehumanisation of children. A United Nations report found that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed (and 45,000 more injured) since October 2023.

It also concluded that a) the rate and scale of Palestinian children killed was unprecedented across modern conflicts, and b) that incidents of sniper or drone killings, including those where children were sheltering from danger, indicated deliberate targeting. If you don’t want to read about this in a purportedly football column, don’t stand for football supporters chanting about it.

But then football invited this. You can curse those subsections of the support of two English clubs – and we are – but their behaviour was implicitly acquiesced by the wider game’s inaction and that inaction became a choice. For those who are responsible for doing better and being braver, this was too messy, too complicated and too damn political for them to dare.

Fifa and Uefa banned Russia within four days of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That reflected the message of the international community as a whole: this is very bad, we are taking action, this really isn’t something to make light of. The tone was set; the response was swift.

Here, basically nothing. There was not the groundswell of backlash from Uefa nations. There was publicly stated determination from the US Government to prevent any Israel ban from international football, despite calls from UN experts and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Outrage fatigue kicked in but so did a deliberate decision from those within football’s leadership to do nothing, even when children were dying en masse and when an estimated 570 Palestinian footballers had been killed. Fifa chose not to intervene in the continued presence in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams in the West Bank, although fines were issued for “discrimination and racist abuse” plus “offensive behaviour and violations of the principles of fair play.”

“Fifa can’t solve geopolitical conflicts”, said the Football governing body’s president, Gianni Infantino. “We are committed to using the power of football and the Fifa World Cup to build bridges and promote peace as our thoughts are with those who are suffering as a consequence of the ongoing wars.”

There is not a direct line between governmental inaction and Sunday afternoon. International action does not stop football fans from being dim: Chelsea supporters chanted Roman Abramovich’s name during a Ukraine tribute in 2022 (coincidentally also at Turf Moor). Similarly, inaction does not make the behaviour inevitable: Southampton supporters haven’t chanted the same regarding Israel international Daniel Peretz.

But these are the aftershocks of wilful inaction. Sport presented itself as powerless when it suited, far too soon after it raised on its hind legs to castigate a different state because it felt easier.

Here’s the thing: sport is pretty powerless. It possesses only a facade of strength, a mirage. But that mirage itself is indelibly significant as a gesture. Doing something may not change the world. But doing something is always a different statement from doing nothing.

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For clubs, a difficult path to tread. But the least we should expect is a clampdown, swiftly and meaningfully, on any such chanting at matches. Leeds, to their credit, did so. West Ham must follow suit. We cannot allow hate to breed unchecked.

We also can and should condemn those edge banter overlords in Turf Moor’s away end and their hokey-cokey on politics blurring with football. The chant must not be repeated because – newsflash singing about death and conflict, even indirectly, is grim behaviour at any time.

But we should also dig a little deeper and ask why these people subconsciously feel empowered to chant it at all, why this conflict in particular is deemed worthy of inclusion. Is it because football glossed over this one? Is it because resistance was considered inappropriate when it suited? Is it because some lives matter less?