Forgot Your Password?
New to The Nation? Subscribe
Print subscriber? Activate your online access
FIFA banned apartheid South Africa. It banned Russia for invading Ukraine. But about Israel, FIFA does nothing.
Celtics supporters hold Palestinian flags and stage a protest with the slogan “Free Palestine” during the UEFA Champions League football match between Borussia Dortmund and Celtic in Germany on October 1.
On October 1, fans of the Scottish soccer club Celtic FC waved Palestinian flags and released green smoke during their Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund in Germany. Celtic’s Green Brigade supporters group, long champions of the Palestinian cause, orchestrated a mini-protest for Gaza: Fourteen people, wearing keffiyeh balaclavas and white shirts that spelled out “Free Palestine,” lit flares in unison.
Two days later, FIFA, the world’s governing body for soccer, took the opposite approach: It refused to act on the Palestinian Football Association’s 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 in bureaucratese: “The FIFA Disciplinary Committee will be mandated to initiate an investigation into the alleged offense of discrimination raised by the Palestine Football Association.” Fully committing to the stonewalling, the group stated, “The FIFA Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee will be entrusted with the mission to investigate—and subsequently advise the FIFA Council on—the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine.”
In other words, FIFA kicked the can of ethics down the road.
Let’s be clear: FIFA’s double standard is glaring. In 2022, FIFA banned Russia just four days after the invasion of Ukraine. FIFA issued an unequivocal joint statement with UEFA, the overseers of European football: “Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine.” 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 have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces. According to a statement by the Palestinian Football Association in July, 343 athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, including 242 soccer players.
The statutes guiding FIFA are straightforward: “FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.” The group’s governing regulations also state, “Discrimination of any kind” is “strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”
FIFA’s conspicuous inaction is similar to the International Olympic Committee’s approach to Israel’s participation in the Paris Olympics last summer. Russian athletes were forced to participate as “individual neutral athletes,” while Israeli Olympians were free to compete under their flag and with their national anthem.
In August, Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub told us that Israel should be barred from sports due to its extreme human rights violations. “It’s not a political issue for me. It’s a moral issue. It’s a legal issue. It’s an ethical issue,” he said.
Ned Resnikoff
John Nichols
Books & the Arts / Lynne Feeley
Feature / Edward W. Said
Rajoub has long fought to exclude Israel from the World Cup and Olympics—or, as he phrased it, to issue them “a red card”—because of the country’s clear violations of both FIFA Statutes and the Olympic Charter. In May, Rajoub said, “FIFA 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.”
Rajoub is not alone. Human rights experts from the United Nations issued a statement demanding that FIFA respect international law, noting, “Over 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.” The experts added, “A ninth club, based inside Israel, plays some home games in a settlement.”
The human rights group Ekō carried out a detailed investigation 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. “By holding games on stolen land, FIFA is tarnishing the beautiful game of football,” HRW asserted, way back in 2016.
In 2023, UEFA fined Celtic FC $19,000 after its justice-minded fans brandished Palestinian flags during a Champions League match, categorizing the flags as “provocative messages of an offensive nature.” And yet Celtic diehards have not relented, demonstrating more courage and commitment to principle than either FIFA or UEFA.
Katarina Pijetlovic, the head of the Palestinian Football Association legal department, said to us, “This decision, while frustrating, was expected because it’s 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.”
It is precisely “moments like this” 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.
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—like FIFA—see life as cheap.
In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.
We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.
Stories like these and the one you just read are vital at this critical juncture in our country’s history. Now more than ever, we need clear-eyed and deeply reported independent journalism to make sense of the headlines and sort fact from fiction. Donate today and join our 160-year legacy of speaking truth to power and uplifting the voices of grassroots advocates.
Throughout 2024 and what is likely the defining election of our lifetimes, we need your support to continue publishing the insightful journalism you rely on.
Thank you,
The Editors of The Nation
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 What Are the Olympics For?
Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has considered a statewide ban on smart devices in schools, but many parents, students, and teachers have a more nuanced view.
StudentNation / Ushoshi Das
To understand the ambitions of the conservative majority, look no farther than Project 2025, which was cooked up by some of the same people who engineered the current court.
Feature / Elie Mystal
Why are places like Stanford and Johns Hopkins hosting gatherings of well-known coronavirus cranks?
Gregg Gonsalves
The baseball legend was an example of not only the perils of gambling but also why the sports leagues’ embrace of the online-betting industry makes them predatory hypocrites.
Obituary / Dave Zirin
Not only are abortion bans actively harmful to women and their families—they also don’t work to recreate the past as conservatives want them to.
Elizabeth Gregory
Sakinah discovered Chicago’s Abortion Counseling Service, better known as Jane, because she wanted to help a friend. Then she became an essential part of it.
Feature / Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone
