News

Tell FIFA to dump Israel now, urges international campaign

The congress of FIFA, the International Football Federation, is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Sao Paulo, and the international campaign to have Israel kicked out of the organization for longtime human rights abuses and violations of international law is swinging into full gear right now.

Kick Israel out of FIFA (graphic: Stephanie Westbrook)
Kick Israel out of FIFA (graphic: Stephanie Westbrook)

As we’ve been reporting for months, Jibril Rajoub, chair of the Palestinian Football Association, is seeking sanctions against Israel and demanding Israel’s expulsion from FIFA. Time is of the essence, so if those who care about Palestinian rights act together with a loud enough roar, our global message of solidarity will reverberate all over the world and land… in Sao Paulo.

Red Card Israeli Racism (RCIR), has issued a Twitter Action Alert! that begins within hours of this post being published–Monday morning in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Check it out.

Its petition,  a call to suspend the Israeli Football Association’s FIFA membership, was submitted at FIFA offices in Zurich last Wednesday and has over 12,000 signatures. RCIR will keep the petition active until its objective is achieved. The article Petition to suspend the Israeli FA submitted to FIFA prior to decisive Congress explains:

It is intended as input to all FIFA members at the 10-11 June Annual Congress.   There the results of the Israel/Palestine Task Force will be presented and the abuse of the human rights of Palestinian footballers will be addressed.  Ever since the 1920s Zionists and the Israeli state have exploited football for political reasons to camouflage the apartheid character of the Zionist enterprise.  This cannot be allowed to continue.  The Israeli FA is complicit in Israeli repression.

For anyone not following the campaign (documented in part hereherehere, here), RCIR issued a response to FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s misleading assertions on the issue. RCIR’s Kenneth Fryde, reporting at Football Beyond Borders, does a wrap up of the strides taken over the past year in “No normal sport in an apartheid state.”

And finally, RCIR coordinator Geoffrey Lee recently returned from Palestine where he’s making a film about football in the land of apartheid. He visited the family of Saji Darwish, a student at Bir Zeit University who was shot in the head and killed while feeding goats outside his home near Ramallah during an Israeli military killing spree last March (six Palestinians killed over 24 hours).

Lee emailed this to me today and I wanted to share it with you:

Our visit to the family of Saji Darwish was the most poignant.  It was a month after his killing.  His brother was brave in the interview and pointed out the fenced off Israeli-only road from which the shots had come.  The official report mentioned that there were only two shots – and said little more. That evening the village held a 5-a-side commemorative tournament.   His uncle thought that only then was the village beginning to emerge from its state of shock.  Football was helping the community pull itself around.

We met a coach who had been beaten, and a sports organiser who had tear gas grenades thrown at him, and children who were manhandled in pitch invasions.  The potential for violence seemed to be everywhere.  Road blocks were quiet and threatening; delays meant that an away game could often take two days.  Families worried about players’ return.

 It was depressing to see the pitches that couldn’t be used, as they were in Area C (full Israeli security control), and to hear of the shortage of pitches.  The professional league has eleven pitches for twelve teams and that only seven are up to full international standard.  FIFA had to abandon Goal investment projects due the intransigence of the Israeli military.

For all that, the game is on the up.  The Palestinian FA is pushing domestically and internationally for improvements and it has FIFA support.  We can express our solidarity through BDS activities, like banning Israeli hosting of tournaments and suspending the Israeli FA from FIFA, and by direct involvement like fixing team exchanges and coaching visits, which is already happening through Friendship Associations.  But how about upping the ante – training camps, exchanges between professional teams and direct support in facilities by our Football Associations?  There’s plenty of scope and it would be enormously beneficial.

Action Alert! Let’s make it happen.

(Thanks to Steph Westbrook and Edward Mast at Apartheid Adventures)

45 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Great reporting, and great coverage overall of this issue. Americans gotta understand that they/we are an anomaly when football(world football) isn’t the biggest sport in the country.

For both Israel and the Palestinians, it is the biggest sport.

So this will hurt Israeli apartheid just like boycotts on the SA sports teams did in the 80s.

Just watch Zionists and other apologists of apartheid attack this as “collective punishment”, just like the Apartheid regime’s defenders once did in the 70s and 80s.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter, May 27:
“I don’t know on what items the FIFA Congress should take action against the IFA, if they are (acting) according to the statutes and regulations of FIFA.
“So far, we haven’t seen any breach of regulations… until then, who could take action against somebody who is a good member of FIFA? I can tell you that your federation is a good standing member,” he said.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/fifa-president-says-he-wont-sanction-israel/#ixzz347WaMkkP

Thank you, RCIR, for spreading the undeniable truth that Israel’s national sport is attacking innocent Palestinian children. If more people knew this, instead of being misled by the Zionists that Israel’s national sport was football, they would join the righteous Palestinian cause and oppose apartheid.

“1.9) On 23/10/2012, Israeli Intelligence Forces, accompanied by Israeli Border Guard Forces, besieged the Islami Silwan club in east Jerusalem and gave them an order to close the club, under threat that any members who participate in sport activities will be arrested. The club had to withdraw from the 3rd class league after this order. It’s worth mentioning that, in March, 20013, the ban was renewed for another year.

1.10) On 26/10/2012, player Imad Abbassi, who plays for Nadi Al-Muwathafin Club, was arrested by Israeli police and placed under house arrest, after being subjected to 6 successive arrests. It’s worth mentioning that the abovementioned player used to play for Nadi Silwan, and had transferred to Al-Muwathafin club after the Israeli Occupation forces shut his former club.

1.11) On 16/12/2012, and in the old city of Jerusalem, an employee of Al-Muwathafin Club, Mr. Nehad Sugayyar, was attacked by a group of Orthodox Israelis, under the eyes of Israeli police who –needless to say- refrained from intervening. He suffered several burns and bruises from said attack.

1.12) Ms. Mona Barbar, an employee in the Palestinian Higher Council of Youth & Sport, was arrested by the Israeli Authorities in 1/3/2013 with other people. Her charge was “organizing sport activities in east Jerusalem”.”

“3.1)3. Beit Ummar Stadium/Hebron: The Israeli side argued that the proposed stadium poses a threat on Israeli security, since it borders road #60, and in the event that 10.000 spectators were present, there was a chance they might decide to throw stones on the passing Israeli cars. They also said that such a number of spectators would cause a traffic jam in the junction and the main road. The Palestinian side proposed solutions to said security concerns, saying that the PNA will take responsibility whenever a game is staged, and will provide security forces in numbers enough to prevent any problems before they occur, that if they do. And, as a further precaution, a street will be paved by the Municipality from the northwestern side, which will be the main entrance to the stadium. No entrance will be made on the side of road #60, and no cars will be allowed to park on that side. Furthermore, the Palestinian side said it is possible to build a fenced wall on the side of road #60. The Israeli side stuck to their statements and asked that the Palestinian side choose another piece of land. Consequently, the PFA decided to move the GP from Beit Ummar to Burin, which is located in zone “A”.

3.1)4. Burin: Following the problem in Beit Ummar, the PFA selected the site of Burin (near the city of Nablus) which is within an area allotted to a school clearly located in zone “A”, all the documents requested by the Israeli side were given to them. After a few days, an Israeli force stormed the location and blocked the preparatory works.”

http://xssportpal.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/israeli-transgressions-against_9933.html

rcir had a link to the above site, but the main page was in French. The list of interferences is like one of Kates’s lists.

FIFA is all about money. The US has a better chance of winning the World Cup than FIFA does ruling against Israel.