FIFA’s anti-Russia stance, but not a word on Israel

Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state itself. For Palestinians, sport is a critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet, the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international sports organisations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian sports.

Now that Fifa, along with UEFA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and others have swiftly joined the West’s anti-Russia measures as a result of the latter’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Palestinians and their supporters are puzzled. Years of relentless advocacy to sanction Israel at international sports competitions have paid little or no dividends. This has continued to be the case, despite the numerous documented facts of Israel’s intentional targeting of Palestinian stadiums, travel restrictions on athletes, the cancelation of sports events, the arrest and even killing of Palestinian footballers.

Many Palestinians, Arabs and international activists have already highlighted the issue of western hypocrisy in the case of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine by apartheid Israel within hours of the start of the Russian military operations. Almost immediately, an unprecedented wave of boycotts and sanctions of everything Russian, including music, art, theater, literature and, of course, sports, kicked in. What took the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa decades to achieve was carried out against Russia in a matter of hours and days.

Palestinians are justified to be baffled, since they have been informed by Fifa, time and again, that ‘sports and politics don’t mix’. Marvel at this hypocrisy to truly appreciate Palestinian frustration: “The Fifa Council acknowledges that the current situation (in Palestine and Israel) is, for reasons that have nothing to do with football, characterized by an exceptional complexity and sensitivity and by certain de facto circumstances that can neither be ignored nor changed unilaterally by non-governmental organizations such as Fifa”. That was, in part, the official Fifa position declared in October 2017, in response to a Palestinian request that the “six Israeli football clubs based in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories should either relocate to Israel or be banned from Fifa-recognized competitions”.

Two years later, Israel so callously canceled the Fifa Palestine Cup that was meant to bring Gaza’s top football team, Khadamat Rafah Club, and the West Bank’s FC Balata together in a dramatic final.

Palestinians perceive football as a respite from the hardship of life under siege and occupation. The highly anticipated event would have been a moment of precious unity among Palestinians and would have been followed by a large number of people, regardless of their political affiliation or geographic location. But, and ‘for no apparent reason’, as reported in the Nation, Israel decided to deny Palestinians that brief moment of joy. Even then, Fifa did nothing, despite the fact that the event itself carried the name ‘Fifa’.

Excerpted: ‘Politics and Sports Do Mix: On Fifa’s Hypocrisy in Palestine and the Need to Isolate Apartheid Israel’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org

Originally published in The News