The movements for the ban of Israel from international sport are becoming increasingly stronger.
In recent weeks, appeals to ban of Israel from international sport due to the war – or at least the obvious crimes committed – in the Gaza Strip have become increasingly stronger and more numerous, transforming from simple requests or movements into collections of signatures, associations and concrete gestures. Last month, the political movement Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) led by the Greek economist Gianīs Varoufakīs has launched a global petition for the suspension of Israeli teams and athletes from every sport which to date (15 March 2024) has already exceeded 86’000 firm. Added to this is an open letter, shared on social media by the Irish MEP Chris McManus and signed by many of his colleagues, in which FIFA, UEFA, the IOC and “all the other competent bodies” are explicitly asked to act firmly to exclude Israelis from the sporting community European and global. Various other movements, clubs and individual athletes spread across Europe and the world are also asking themselves the problem of how to react if they find themselves faced with opponents of Israeli nationality and others, however, are fighting similar battles but limited to culture, economy or other specific areas.
Katarina Pijetlovic, one of the co-organizers of the DiEM25 petition, explained to the German newspaper Deutsche Welle that obviously, as in the case of Russia, the request for exclusion it is not intended to be a targeted punishment and personal towards individual athletes or sports clubs (in sport and especially in football, the component of Arabs of Israeli citizenship is and has always been notable, for example, and one might think it is unfair to punish them) but it is a way to try to “put pressure on the Israeli government also through sport” which in Israel (like almost everywhere) is used as an internal and external propaganda tool to publicize an alleged peaceful coexistence under the blue-white flag.
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Pijetlovic logically compares Israel’s situation today to that of Russia since February 24, 2022the day of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, when Russian and Belarusian teams – clubs and national teams – were expelled from every UEFA and FIFA tournament while athletes in individual sports were forced to compete as stateless people. “On the fourth day of the invasion of Ukraine (the one in which the first sanctions from the world of sport were triggered, ed.), if we only compare the numbers, 259 Ukrainian civilians were killed, including fourteen children, and we all agree agreement that these were unacceptable figures for which to sanction a country. In Gaza, after five months of war, Around 30,000 Palestinian civilians died, of which 14,000 children and no body proposed to take action. We have yet to see any action, not even a word of condemnation from FIFA, UEFA, the IOC or anyone else. I think the international response to Russian aggression has been very, very different than what we’re seeing now.”
In addition to the obvious parallels with the contemporary situation in Russia, they can be found other examples of excluded countries from the sporting arena due to systematic violations of human rights, without even the ban was the consequence of an exceptional event such as a war of invasion. The best known case is that of South Africa, excluded from the IOC from 1962 to 1992 in response to the racist policies ofapartheid. Superfluous but nevertheless necessary to remember how the Palestinian population confined between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank lives in fact in condition of apartheid physical, social and legislative for many decades, as Arabs with Israeli citizenship are in fact second-tier citizens compared to their Jewish counterparts, despite making up 20% of the total population.
Well before European politicians and spontaneous petitions, however, there had already been action West Asian Football Federation (WAFF), the sub-confederation that includes all the main Arab countries – including Palestine – and is led by the respected Jordanian prince Ali ibn al-Husayn. WAFF had turned to Alexander Ceferin, president of UEFA, who admitted that the organization did not yet have a definitive position on the conflict, but that it was receiving a very high number of calls for a boycott of Israel. With the Paris Olympics which will begin in July and the Israeli footballers who, in less than two weeks, will play the playoffs to qualify for the European Championships in June in Germany, the management of world sport must necessarily take a stand and clarify their intentions as soon as possible.
The letter of Ali bin Hussein, president of the Jordan FA and the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF), who wrote to FIFA on January 30, calling to ban #Israel from world football governing body. No mention for the 7/10 massacre. pic.twitter.com/nxa1OktpBj
— Uri Levy (@Levyninho) February 8, 2024
Also because, up to now, the response of sports institutions throughout the Western world has been silence, if not in some cases explicit support for Israel even long after the very first phases of reaction to the massacre of 7 October 2023. The problem, however, is not only the total absence of solidarity (or even the repression of solidarity) towards the civilian victims of this conflict. As mentioned, one of the main points of the protest is the obvious double standards of FIFA, UEFA, IOC and company. When Russian and Belarusian athletes – rightly, in my opinion – are prohibited from participating as representatives of their country in any international competition, their Israeli colleagues are even treated with special attentionoffering them stages in neutral fields where they can display banners praising the army or extraordinary security measures that are to the complete detriment of the home fans, as happened in the double challenge between Fiorentina and Maccabi Haifa.
What happened in Florence this week, for example, has something to do with it surreal and, at the same time, paradigmatic differences in approach to public safety. From the day before the match, many avenues of Florence in the stadium area were closed, creating quite a few inconveniences for the inhabitants of the affected areas, people who in the vast majority had nothing to do with the match. The whole area of Campo di Marte has been “militarized” at least since the evening before, complete with the forced removal of parked cars. The Franchi parterre has become a zone off-limits, greatly limiting the capacity of the stadium, and above all the home fans were forced (or at least, they had to be according to plans) to enter the stadium by 6.15pm. On Thursday afternoon. All this, to guarantee a trip in maximum safety for the Maccabi fans. It would all be completely legit (sort of) if only that was the normal yardstick – sorry for the populism – when instead in Italy we hear more and more often about away games being banned due to the risk of meetings between fans along the way or about restrictions on the sale of tickets without any reason linked to previous public order problems or full-blown rivalries.
Among the various petitions asking for the ban of Israel from the world of sport, there is also one created independently in Italy (CLICK HERE from the blog initiative Football&Revolution which has always dealt with links and connections between sport and politics. Their appeal quickly collected a large number of signatures (including mine) and is addressed directly to the FGIC. They did it without having great hopes or expectations, but – as they told me – after months of silence at a national level they listened “the responsibility to stir the waters” while aware “that it would not have been an initiative that would have found favor with those high up in the hierarchies of the world of football”. For this reason they chose to move immediately into the world they know best: “popular football teams, independent journalists, female and male fans”. However, the collection of signatures soon began to cross the closest borders, reaching for example the journalist of The Athetic Leyla Hamed, the former captain of the women’s Palestine team Deema Yousef or the current deputy Natali Shaheen. “The hope is to trigger a domino effect whereby little by little we are able to involve more and more people and entities, even reaching the top floors of the Italian football pyramid.”
This article originally appeared in Catenaccio, Sportellate’s newsletter. To receive Catenaccio for free or read back issues, you can click here.
2024-03-21 14:00:00
#campaigns #exclude #Israel #sport
