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Jewish Soccer Star in England Warns of Rising Antisemitism Among Fans Since Hamas Atrocities
Wycombe Wanderers’ Jewish captain Joe Jacobson in action. Photo: Reuters/Dennis Goodwin
One of the United Kingdom’s few professional Jewish soccer players has spoken out on the antisemitic abuse he has faced from fans as a result of a social media post he shared following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.
“For me, I feel a responsibility as one of the few Jewish footballers in the UK to speak out,” Joe Jacobson told the BBC in an extensive interview on Tuesday.
The 37-year-old veteran is the captain of Wycombe Wanderers, who compete in League One — the third tier of English professional soccer. During a 20-year career in the game, Jacobson said he had never seriously been confronted with antisemitism until the Hamas atrocities.
Anger turned on Jacobson in the wake of the massacre in Israel, when he referred in a post on X/Twitter to the scenes of jubilation in Gaza following the bloodshed. “Imagine taking to the streets and celebrating mass murder,” Jacobson wrote.
Jacobson was promptly inundated with antisemitic abuse. “It is hate messages,” he said. “It’s not anything to do with what I’m posting, it’s just comments that people want to throw at you really.”
He emphasized that in the past, whenever he had “spoken about antisemitism there wasn’t much for me to talk about from my own personal experience. However, since what happened in October, it seems to be more and more things going on.”
Threatening messages were also sent to Jacobson’s club, forcing them to provide him with extra security.
“One of them wasn’t necessarily a threat, but more a demand that I apologize and demanded that the club took me away from being the captain,” said Jacobson. “They said if they didn’t, then they might barricade the gates at Adams Park [Wycombe’s home ground]. Then going to a match, there was all these weird things happening, with people wanting to come with me on the journey, and there were phone calls to friends on the journey saying where were we.”
Jacobson said that when he “got out of the car in the car park there were people surrounding me, Wycombe staff saying ‘come on Joe, let’s go into the stadium.’ And that is really different and abnormal to what it usually is. Later on I found out that they had plain clothes security there just in case people were looking to do something … It was something I didn’t realize would have to happen going to a football match.”
Jacobson encouraged fans who witness antisemitic incidents to report them to soccer’s governing authorities in order for the scale of the problem to be properly understood. According to Kick It Out, an anti-discrimination charity focused on soccer, there was an increase of more than 400 percent in antisemitic acts during the first half of the present soccer season, with reported instances over that period rising from 11 in the 2022-23 season to 57 in the current campaign.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
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Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, the New York Times reported on Saturday citing unnamed Iranian officials. It is understood the Ayatollah fears he could be assassinated in the coming days.
Khamenei reportedly mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications.
Khamenei has designated three senior religious figures as candidates to replace him as well as choosing successors in the military chain of command in the likely event that additional senior officials be eliminated.
Earlier on Saturday Israel confirmed the elimination of Saeed Izadi and Bhanam Shahriari.
Shahriari, head of Iran’s Quds Force Weapons Transfer Unit, responsible for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, was killed in an Israeli airstrike over 1,000 km from Israel in western Iran.
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