{"id":277484,"date":"2024-10-21T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=277484"},"modified":"2024-10-17T04:41:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T03:41:15","slug":"in-a-glaring-double-standard-fifa-fails-to-suspend-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/10\/in-a-glaring-double-standard-fifa-fails-to-suspend-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Glaring Double Standard, FIFA Fails to Suspend Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Celtic supporters hold Palestinian flags and stage a protest with the slogan \u201cFree Palestine\u201d during the UEFA Champions League soccer match Borussia Dortmund vs. Celtic in Germany on 1 Oct 2024.
(Ina Fassbender \/ Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Oct 2024 – FIFA banned apartheid South Africa. It banned Russia for invading Ukraine. But about Israel, FIFA does nothing.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On October 1, fans of the Scottish soccer club Celtic FC waved Palestinian flags<\/a> and released green smoke during their Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund in Germany. Celtic\u2019s Green Brigade supporters group, long champions of the Palestinian cause, orchestrated<\/a> a mini-protest for Gaza: Fourteen people, wearing keffiyeh balaclavas and white shirts that spelled out \u201cFree Palestine,\u201d lit flares in unison.<\/p>\n

Two days later, FIFA, the world\u2019s governing body for soccer, took the opposite approach: It refused to act on the Palestinian Football Association\u2019s request to suspend Israel for violating international law in its ongoing attacks on Gaza, for discriminating against Arab players, and for including in its domestic league clubs that are located in Palestinian territory. Instead, FIFA issued an evasive statement<\/a> in bureaucratese: \u201cThe FIFA Disciplinary Committee will be mandated to initiate an investigation into the alleged offense of discrimination raised by the Palestine Football Association.\u201d Fully committing to the stonewalling, the group stated, \u201cThe FIFA Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee will be entrusted with the mission to investigate\u2014and subsequently advise the FIFA Council on\u2014the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, FIFA kicked the can of ethics down the road.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: FIFA\u2019s double standard is glaring. In 2022, FIFA banned Russia just four days after the invasion of Ukraine. FIFA issued<\/a> an unequivocal joint statement with UEFA, the overseers of European football: \u201cFootball is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine.\u201d And yet, to date, the soccer honchos have extended no such sentiments of solidarity to the people of Gaza, where more than 41,000 people<\/a> have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces. According to a statement<\/a> by the Palestinian Football Association in July, 343 athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, including 242 soccer players.<\/p>\n

The statutes<\/a> guiding FIFA are straightforward: \u201cFIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.\u201d The group\u2019s governing regulations also state, \u201cDiscrimination of any kind\u201d is \u201cstrictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIFA\u2019s conspicuous inaction is similar to the International Olympic Committee\u2019s approach<\/a> to Israel\u2019s participation in the Paris Olympics last summer. Russian athletes were forced to participate as \u201cindividual neutral athletes<\/a>,\u201d while Israeli Olympians were free to compete under their flag and with their national anthem.<\/p>\n

In August, Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub told us<\/a> that Israel should be barred from sports due to its extreme human rights violations. \u201cIt\u2019s not a political issue for me. It\u2019s a moral issue. It\u2019s a legal issue. It\u2019s an ethical issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rajoub has long fought to exclude Israel from the World Cup and Olympics\u2014or, as he phrased it, to issue them \u201ca red card\u201d\u2014because of the country\u2019s clear violations of both FIFA Statutes<\/a> and the Olympic Charter<\/a>. In May, Rajoub said<\/a>, \u201cFIFA cannot afford to remain indifferent to these violations or to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, just as it did not remain indifferent to numerous precedents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rajoub is not alone. Human rights experts from the United Nations issued a statement <\/a>demanding that FIFA respect international law, noting, \u201cOver the years, at least eight [Israeli] football clubs have developed or have been identified as playing in Israeli colonial settlements of the occupied West Bank.\u201d The experts added, \u201cA ninth club, based inside Israel, plays some home games in a settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The human rights group Ek\u014d carried out a detailed investigation<\/a> that concluded that Israel should be banned from international football. It pinpointed specific historical moments when FIFA banned countries because of gross human rights violations: South Africa was banned in 1961 over apartheid, and Yugoslavia was not allowed to play after violence it meted out in the Balkans. For years Human Rights Watch has been documenting how Israeli soccer clubs have been staging matches in West Bank settlements, thereby contributing to human rights violations. \u201cBy holding games on stolen land, FIFA is tarnishing the beautiful game of football,\u201d HRW asserted<\/a>, way back in 2016.<\/p>\n

In 2023, UEFA fined<\/a> Celtic FC $19,000 after its justice-minded fans brandished Palestinian flags during a Champions League match, categorizing the flags as \u201cprovocative messages of an offensive nature.\u201d And yet Celtic diehards have not relented, demonstrating more courage and commitment to principle than either FIFA or UEFA.<\/p>\n

Katarina Pijetlovic, the head of the Palestinian Football Association legal department, said to us, \u201cThis decision, while frustrating, was expected because it\u2019s FIFA, and this is how they operate. There is a reason that when [FIFA President Gianni] Infantino was elected in 2016, Israel supported the decision. Now we know why they were so thrilled. Because of moments like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is precisely \u201cmoments like this\u201d that make efforts to extract justice for Palestine through FIFA such a difficult road. The fight for a free Palestine is a fight ultimately for social justice against an apartheid settler state backed by the West. FIFA presents itself as a global, all-encompassing organization with room in its arms for all nations. But the reality is that wealthy, Western nations play the tune and Infantino dances.<\/p>\n

Not even the mass civilian casualties in Palestine have caused Infantino and FIFA to act differently. To think that FIFA would live up to fundamental principles enshrined in its own rules is to live in a global fantasyland. In reality, these Western institutions\u2014like FIFA\u2014see life as cheap.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jules Boykoff is a professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon and the author of six books on the Olympic Games, most recently <\/em>What Are the Olympics For?<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dave Zirin, <\/em>The Nation\u2019s sports correspondent is the author, most recently, of <\/em>Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. Named one of <\/em>UTNE Reader\u2019s \u201c50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,\u201d Zirin\u00a0is a frequent guest on <\/em>MSNBC, ESPN and <\/em>Democracy NOW! He also hosts his own weekly <\/em>Sirius XM show, Edge of Sports Radio. His other books include <\/em>What’s My Name Fool? (Haymarket Books),<\/em> A People’s History of Sports in the United States (the New Press), <\/em>Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love (Scribner) and, with John Wesley Carlos,\u00a0<\/em>The John Carlos Story. You can find all his work at <\/em>www.edgeofsports.com<\/i><\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – thenation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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