English Premier League club West Ham United has made a public appeal to its fanbase to abandon an offensive, divisive chant targeting new winger Manor Solomon that carries an explicit anti-Palestine message, just days ahead of the club’s 2025-26 FA Cup clash against Charlton Athletic.
Solomon, a former Israeli soldier who moved to West Ham from Tottenham Hotspur in August 2025, has long courted controversy for his repeated public defense of Israel’s military occupation and its large-scale military operations in Gaza, making him a polarizing figure across European football. The chant that has drawn condemnation from West Ham’s leadership, which labels the lyrics ‘Manor Solomon’s on my mind and he hates Palestine’, has followed Solomon throughout his recent spells in European leagues. The same chant was first aired by Leeds United supporters during his 2024-25 loan spell at the Championship club, before reemerging after his transfer to West Ham.
In an official statement released Thursday, the club made clear that the chant violates its core institutional values of unity and inclusion. The statement emphasized that all individuals associated with West Ham—from players and coaching staff to matchgoing supporters—are expected to uphold the club’s commitment to respect across all backgrounds and beliefs. ‘We are as our name says: United,’ the club’s statement read, reinforcing its expectation of inclusive behavior from its fanbase.
What has been less widely reported until now is the long track record of controversial pro-occupation and pro-military statements that Solomon has made throughout the current Gaza crisis, aligning him with the most hardline factions of Israeli public opinion amid the conflict. As far back as October 2023, leading Israeli sports outlet Sport 5 openly described Solomon as a leading figure in Israeli state propaganda, praising him for amplifying content that framed Israel as the justified party in the conflict.
One of the most high-profile incidents of Solomon taking a public stance came hours after the deadly October 17, 2023 explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza City, where thousands of displaced Palestinians had taken shelter to escape Israeli airstrikes. Gaza’s Ministry of Health recorded 471 deaths and 342 additional injuries from the blast. Immediately after the attack, Solomon parroted the Israeli government’s false claim that Palestinian armed groups were responsible for the explosion, writing on social media: ‘They kill their own people, then blame Israel.’ Open-source investigative agency Forensic Architecture later debunked Israel’s core claims, confirming that the projectile that caused the explosion originated from Israeli positions.
In the 18 months following the hospital explosion, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has systematically dismantled the strip’s entire healthcare system. Forensic Architecture’s research has found that Israeli military operations have forced 35 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals to suspend services at different points of the campaign, with 31 hospitals directly targeted in airstrikes, 11 placed under full military siege, and 10 invaded by ground forces.
Solomon again aligned himself with Israeli military policy during the planned invasion of Rafah in May 2024. As millions of people around the world shared the viral slogan ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ to draw attention to the more than one million Palestinian civilians sheltering in the city—then the last remaining unoccupied area in Gaza—Solomon pushed back against critics of the planned assault, responding: ‘Where were your eyes on October 7?’ The subsequent Israeli ground invasion of Rafah reduced large swathes of the city to rubble and displaced hundreds of thousands of additional civilians. Israeli outlet Walla later praised Solomon for continuing to defend Israeli military action on social media despite widespread international backlash against the operation.
The most recent controversy involving Solomon came in October 2025, during his brief spell at Spanish side Villarreal ahead of his transfer to West Ham. Ahead of a league match in Sevilla, Solomon claimed that the presence of Palestinian flags in the stands made him feel ‘threatened’, and added that he was motivated to score ‘in the faces’ of Sevilla’s supporter group ultras.
Solomon’s public support for Israeli policy stretches back years before the 2023 Gaza war. During the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian crisis, when Israeli courts ordered the forced expulsion of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan—firing tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets at worshippers—Solomon openly backed Israeli military action. After Hamas fired rockets in protest of the Israeli incursions, Israel launched an 11-day aerial bombardment of Gaza that killed at least 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, wounded almost 2,000 more, and displaced more than 70,000. Amid global outcry over the civilian death toll, Solomon declared: ‘I support Israel’s right to defend itself.’
This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet specializing in coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.