[Salon] Palestinians call for FIFA to bar Israel's football team amid war on Gaza

FM: John Whitbeck

The AL JAZEERA article at the link transmitted below reports on the appeal by the Palestine Football Federation to FIFA to ban Israel's national and club teams from all international football competitions.

Silly though it may seem at first glance, I believe that Israel's being banned from international football by FIFA and/or European football by UEFA (Israel, counter-geographically, playing in European competitions) would have a greater impact on Israeli public opinion than Israel's being found guilty of genocide by the International Court of Justice.

It is widely understood that South Africa's exclusion from international sporting competitions (most notably rugby) was the critical catalyst in white South African acceptance of the need to replace their own apartheid system with a non-racist democracy.

https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2024/3/21/fifa-slammed-for-gaza-silence-ahead-of-israel-vs-iceland-world-cup-play-off

This article refers, inaccurately, to Israel's "first-leg of their Euro 2024 qualifier" against Iceland yesterday. In fact, this was a single-elimination match in the context of play-offs among 12 national teams for the final three spots in this June's Euro 2024, and, mercifully, Iceland, an admirable country which extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine in 2011 when my friend and distinguished recipient Ossur Skarphedinsson was foreign minister, crushed Israel 4-1.

As the article notes, Iceland's coach has publicly expressed serious moral reservations against playing a match with a country carrying out an active genocide.

Iceland will now play Ukraine on Tuesday for one of those three spots. By eliminating Israel, Iceland has spared Ukraine, which achieved immediate satisfaction from its appeal to FIFA to ban Russia and Belarus from all international competitions after Russia launched its "special military occupation," from any conceivable moral reservations against playing a match with a country which, by any rational, non-racist standard, is committing crimes far worse than any committed by Russia either before its banning or since.

A PALESTINE CHRONICLE article on this subject (https://www.palestinechronicle.com/immediately-sanction-israeli-teams-palestinians-urge-fifa) notes that the Palestine Football Federation is seeking to have its appeal considered by FIFA's next Congress, which is scheduled for May 17 in Thailand.

If FIFA's leadership were to dare to put this issue on the agenda for its Congress and to permit a vote, the lobbying, threats and inducements deployed against the 211 member associations, representing both sovereign states and non-sovereign territories, by the United States and other pro-apartheid and pro-genocide states could be expected to be fierce.