On a rare visit to Chelsea, owner Roman Abramovich was praised on Sunday by Israeli President Isaac Herzog for using the Premier League leaders' platform to campaign against antisemitism.
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The small event, attended by about 50 people, was the first time Abramovich has been seen at Chelsea's stadium since 2018 when he withdrew his application for a British visa renewal.
The Russian-Israeli businessman traveled to London as an Israeli citizen and he spent around two hours on Sunday morning at the Imperial War Museum London to see the Holocaust Galleries he helped to fund with donations.
Herzog, at the start of a visit to London, said during an address to the audience in a suite at Chelsea's west London stadium that the "club is a shining example of how sports and teams can be a force of good and for shaping a more tolerant tomorrow."
Abramovich has been funding a "Say No To Antisemitism" initiative advanced by the club to address concerns about hatred toward Jewish people.
"The culture and politics of sport at times bring out the worst in humanity," Herzog said, "as we have seen over and over again with antisemitic, racist and violent incidents inside and outside stadiums and in the refusal of athletes to compete against, or shake hands with, their Israeli counterparts."
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