Football and Palestinian liberation
JVL Introduction
Writing on his Rootless Cosmopolitan blog, Tony Karon draws on the experience of the anti-apartheid boycott of South African sport to offer ideas for the sporting boycott of Israel.
Given that the current global order makes serious economic pressure on Israel an unlikely prospect for the immediate future, it is all the more important we find other ways of exerting pressure in sports and cultural spheres.
There are such campaigns, but their successes to date have been mixed and muted.
How many fans and supporters of Palestine were even aware of the campaign in 2014/5 calling for Israel’s suspension from FIFA?
It failed because it tried to work legalistically through the institutional structures without “a protracted effort involving mass, global organization among fans and players to slowly build pressure for individual actions, building up towards a move to suspend Israel.”
The lesson for the future is obvious.
RK
This article was originally published by Rootless Cosmopolitan on Mon 21 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
Football and Palestinian liberation
Why global football offers a fertile and productive terrain for building an international anti-apartheid solidarity movement — and what South Africa showed about how to realize its potential
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Back in the days when the BBC was credibly as a public sector broadcaster – rather than now it’s obvious state affiliated status – it had a commentator, sports journalist and practicing athletics coach on its books called Ron Pickering.
Hard to believe in this free market age, but Ron was an advocate of sports for sports sake – as a way of life and bringing people across social differences and national boundaries together.
Ron never really liked bring politics into sports but after a visit to South Africa concluded that the very nature of the social system prevented fair competition between ethnic groups taking place. Therefore he supported boycott.
It would be hard to otherwise believe that if he was with us now, he’d support similar resistance being applied to apartheid Israel.
On the other hand, the corrupted nature of the state affiliated BBC would never now allow his views to be broadcast.
Very interesting article. I do believe that banning S Africa from playing or competing in international sport played a major part in persuading the Whites in S Africa that apartheid was an evil policy.
From my perspective, there were Whites that were not happy about it but kept it more or less to themselves.
In Israel we have its Apartheid system and we also have it’s relentless and evil acts against the Palestinians that live in Palestine, the bulldozing of their Farms and Villages, beating or even shooting anyone who resists, the stealing of their land, the regular bombing of Gaza, killing innocent civilians, we must put the two together, the Apartheid system and the continuing Nakba.