In an open letter, Al Khader Sports Club is calling on the Uruguay national soccer team to decline Israel’s offer for it to train in the occupied Palestinian territory.
We are mourning our second player shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in less than two months.
We are hopeful that you will heed our appeal and not accept apartheid Israel’s cynical invitation to host your pre-World Cup training session.
On April 11, Israeli soldiers shot our defender, 19-year-old player Mohammad Ghneim. We hadn’t even begun to recover from this tragic loss to our team and community, when, on May 27, Israeli soldiers shot another one of our players, Zaid Ghneim. He was only 14 years old–a child.
Both Zaid and Mohammad were shot in the back during raids by Israeli soldiers in our town of Al Khader, near Bethlehem.
Uruguay must heed this. To accept Israel’s offer to play on stolen land is to further “legitimize” the occupation and offset existing pressure on FIFA to sanction Israel. Moreover, accepting the offer implicitly conveys that Uruguay supports the occupation and, by extension, the continued oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
This cannot be denied. We are not talking about sport on neutral ground. It is where Palestinians, including soccer players, are routinely brutalized such that they either submit to Israeli rule or disappear altogether.
To ignore this and play in the occupied territory automatically makes one anti-Palestinian. If you’re going there, by contrast, to resist Israeli oppression alongside Palestinians that’s of course a different matter. In fact Uruguayan soccer players, as allies, should do so if they are serious about Palestinian. The last thing Palestinians need is outsiders playing sports, largely about money and entertainment, on their land.
FIFA, moreover, should be acting to prevent this. Instead it lies.
FIFA’s double standard
The FIFA Good Practice Guide: On Diversity and Anti-Discrimination states:
FIFA…committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and striving to promote the protection of them in its key set of regulations, the FIFA Statutes, in February 2016. This commitment was embodied in its Human Rights Policy, which was approved by the FIFA Council in May 2017 and which embeds and strengthens its resolution to protect human rights in all of its activities.
Fighting discrimination is a key component of the policy, paragraph 5 of which is unequivocal on the subject: ‘Discrimination is an issue in the world of football both on and off the pitch. FIFA strives to create a discrimination-free environment within its organisation and throughout all of its activities.’
If they were truthful about this FIFA would be disciplining Israel for their routine human rights abuses against Palestinian footballers, grounded in the state’s hateful discrimination. Furthermore, in FIFA saying that “discrimination is an issue in the world of football both on and off the pitch” they at once undermine their own position that politics and sport “shouldn’t mix.” This in a sense is good as they indirectly acknowledge the two cannot be separated. The problem remains however that FIFA does not honour this through action, substantively addressing discrimination “off the pitch” where Palestinian footballers are victims. Not unlike Israel their inaction effectively relegates Palestinian footballers to non-persons—undeserving of basic rights, protection and dignity. This makes FIFA not only tolerant of but the handmaiden to Israeli apartheid. (You can sign Friends of Sabeel North America’s petition against this here.)
Challenged to respond to this they may very well disingenuously reaffirm their “commitment” to social justice. Indeed that’s part of the sportswashing that’s, to some extent, allowed them to get away with failing to sanction Israel for (among other things) brutalizing Palestinian players, preventing their free movement and refusing the building of stadiums in the West Bank for Palestinian soccer activities.
This must be exposed. Right now FIFA largely, on a global scale, continues to enjoy a positive reputation. It’s associated with the “beautiful game”; soccer greats like Pele, Cristiano Renaldo, Diego Maradona; the excitement and glory of World Cup competition; the dream of many a youth globally to become a professional footballer. This inspires admiration for FIFA where there should be condemnation. In effectively allowing Israel to dehumanize Palestinian soccer players FIFA is dishonourable. The more the world sees that the more they will be disinclined to support FIFA events and the like, until it finally sanctions Israel.
Ideally this means prohibiting Israel from playing in FIFA. It doesn’t mean cautioning or persuading Israel about its mistreatment of the Palestinians and hoping that it will comply. It won’t. Israel daily shows the world that it is a criminal and delinquent state, for generations in contempt of even the United Nations. It is set upon eradicating Palestine. This, to any person of conscience, requires the utmost attention, with a concerted effort by the international community—in solidarity with Palestine—to do everything it can to stop it.
Uruguay’s choice
Uruguay’s part, with respect to Al Khader Sports Club’s letter request, is rather easy: don’t play in the territories. Doing so wrongly signals to the world that complicity in Israeli apartheid is fine. Incidentally there’s no reason Uruguay cannot, of all the many soccer facilities available to it, find somewhere else to train. In fact, Uruguay should be suspicious of Israel’s invitation, asking itself why it’s making “available” land it does not have a rightful or legal claim to. What kind of respect could it possibly have for the indigenous people who live there, let alone the struggle for Palestinian justice they’re engaged in daily?
States Noam Chomsky:
In Israel-Palestine, each day is wrenching horror adds new boulders to the walls of hatred, fear, and consuming desire for revenge. But it is never too late to breach those walls.
Only the people who suffer the daily pain and anticipate worse tomorrow can seriously undertake this task directly, but those outside can help substantially to ease the way, though not until they are willing to face honestly their own roles and responsibilities—and hammer out a meaningful road map accordingly, while compelling their governments to implement it.
Chomsky wrote that in a 2003 article, “Road Map to Nowhere.” The world has mobilized in greater numbers and strength to fight for Palestinian since. Students, athletes, academics, actors, even some politicians have taken part, shouting a resounding “no!” to the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in defiance not only of Israel but its allies, including my own country (Canada), that deplorably support it.
FIFA has not joined the movement. It’s long overdue that it does and stop viewing the issue of Israeli apartheid from the sidelines. To reach that end, pressure can be exerted from the bottom, as it were, by teams that comprise the association. That should involve not only Uruguay but all FIFA teams in tandem. FIFA will then have no choice but to sanction Israel at that point or perish.
If that’s what it comes to, so be it. Palestine is infinitely more important than any sport, however loved and cherished.
It seems that the Uruguay national soccer team may not be familiar with the old adage, “lie down with dogs and you’ll get up with fleas.!”
Since the author considers all of Israel occupied territory then the discussion is moot.