Are sports associations next to boycott Israel?
By James M. Dorsey
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International sports boycotts of Israel are a question of
if rather than when, with mounting pressure and ever more targeted boycotts and
sanctions against Israel and widespread public anger at the Jewish state’s
conduct of the Gaza war.
Next week’s United Nations General Assembly proceedings
in New York, where Gaza is certain to take centre stage, are likely to make it
increasingly difficult for international and national sports associations to
remain on the sidelines under the fictional assertion that sports and politics
are separate, and that sports build bridges.
That is true even if attempts by Arab and Muslim-majority
states to suspend Israel’s membership in the United Nations on the grounds that
it has violated the UN Charter are doomed to fail because the United States
will veto any such move in the Security Council.
International and regional sports associations have evaded
and/or rejected calls for Israel’s suspension.
World soccer body FIFA has studiously neglected calls by
the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) and other national soccer bodies by
hiding behind committees established to investigate the legality of occupied
West Bank settler soccer teams competing in Israeli leagues and Israel’s
conduct of the Gaza war.
“FIFA has spent more than 23 months dragging its feet and
postponing a decision to ban Israel from world football… FIFA’s inaction goes
against the organization’s supposed claim that football unites the world, and
that football can serve as a vehicle for peace. It is also a staunch example of
the organization’s hypocrisy, given its willingness to ban Russia from international
football following its invasion of Ukraine,” said sports journalist Karim
Zidan.
Moves to suspend Israel’s UN membership are one of the few
concrete measures suggested by this week’s Arab
and Islamic emergency summit in Doha, convened in response to
Israel’s September 9 strike against Hamas leaders in Qatar.
Similarly, the fact that more Arab and Islamic countries
could join South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against
Israel on charges of genocide could further fuel public anger, fan expressions
of support for Palestine during sports events, and pressure on international
and regional associations to suspend Israeli membership.
So far, only 16 of the 57 members of the Organisation of
Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have joined the South African case, despite the OIC,
along with the 22-member Arab League and the 55-member African Union, having
done so. Some states are members of two or three of the groupings.
Although unlikely, one way sports associations could
sidestep the pressure is to put their money where their mouth is by moving
beyond verbal assertions that sport is a bridgebuilder.
They could, for example, foster dialogue in a universe in
which Israeli exchanges with Arab and Muslim counterparts amount to a dialogue
of the deaf.
Facts on the ground in Gaza leave no doubt about the need
for sports associations to step up to the plate.
Mustafa Sayam, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Union
for Sport, asserted in January that Israel had killed
708 athletes during its now almost two-year-long war in
which it has destroyed Gaza’s sports and other infrastructure.
Six months later, the Palestinian Football Association
reported the figure to be 785.
Fostering dialogue will not silence activists like
controversial former BBC sports commentator and professional footballer Gary
Lineker, legendary former French soccer player Eric Cantona, Irish actor Liam
Cumminghan, musicians Boby Vylan, and Craig Mokhiber, a former United Nations
human rights official, who resigned to protest the UN’s failure to penalise
Israel.
In June, the United States revoked
the visas for the members of Bob Vylan, who face a criminal probe
in the United Kingdom for leading chants of “Death to the IDF,” the Israel
Defence Forces, at a British performing arts festival.
Messrs. Lineker, Cantona, Cummingham, Bob Vylan, and
Mokhiber act as ambassadors for a recently launched Game
Over Israel campaign, the latest civil society effort to
pressure FIFA and other sports associations into action.
Launched by pro-Palestine groups, labour organisations,
fan associations, athletes, celebrities, and human rights organizations, the
campaign calls for boycotting Israel’s national soccer team, Israeli football
clubs, and Israeli players.
The campaign’s timing is significant, a year in advance
of the 2026 World Cup, which the United States, Mexico, and Canada will host.
“As the United States prepares to host the FIFA World Cup
in 2026, Americans must not
allow our stadiums to become platforms for whitewashing war crimes,”
said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the campaign’s initiators.
The United States is unlikely to enforce a boycott of
Israel.
At the same time, the State Department has exempted
from visa restrictions “any athlete or member of an athletic
team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and
immediate relatives, travelling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major
sporting event as determined by the Secretary of State.”
Israel currently ranks third in its World Cup qualifying group behind Norway and Italy.
With Prime Minister Pedro
Sanchez calling for an international sports boycott of Israel, Spanish
officials said Spain may boycott
the tournament if Israel were allowed to participate.
Spain, like Israel, has yet to secure a berth in next year’s competition.
Initially, the Game Over campaign seeks to convince the national
soccer federations of Belgium, England, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway,
Scotland, and Spain, countries critical of Israel’s conduct of
the Gaza war, to boycott Israeli soccer.
The boycott raises a question posed in the biblical tale of Sodom, in which God agrees not to destroy the city if ten righteous men could be found there.
Palestinian players with Israeli citizenship, who play
for Israel’s national soccer team as well as Israeli clubs, and Bnei Sakhnin,
Israel’s most successful Israeli-Palestinian squad, which won the 2004 Israel
Cup, frequently face racist fan slurs.
They are Israeli soccer’s ten righteous men, even if
Israeli fans and sports executives frequently question their loyalty to the
state.
Nevertheless, they too would be penalised by a blanket
boycott. So would Israeli nationals who served in the Israeli military but not in
the current Gaza war.
Some may argue that Israeli Palestinians made their bed
by joining Israeli squads. That argument ignores the fact that they are Israeli
nationals and mostly stand on the right side of history in an increasingly
hostile environment.
To be sure, a selective boycott that seeks to exempt
those on the right side of history is a slippery slope that attaches value judgments
in terms of who deserves to enjoy freedom of expression and who doesn’t.
Boycotts are a form of collective punishment, an Israeli
policy roundly condemned by much of the international community, which, when
applied by states rather than non-state actors, is banned under international
law.
To be sure, boycotts may be one of the most effective
tools available to non-state actors based on freedom of expression and the
right to choose, even if their track record is mixed.
For now, the Norwegian Football Federation has found an
elegant way of navigating the pitfalls of continued Israeli inclusion in
international sports amid calls for a boycott.
The federation pledged to donate the proceeds from its
October 11 World Cup qualifier against Israel to “a humanitarian organization
that saves lives in Gaza every day and provides active emergency aid on the
ground.”
At the end of the day, there may be no good resolution to
the dilemmas posed by a boycott, but activists and campaigners need to address
the issue head-on rather than bury their heads in the sand.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological
University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of
the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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