Why Israel deserves to be a football pariah

JVL Introduction

“Sportwashing” – tyrannical states using sporting events to burnish shameful human rights records – is a practice at least as old as fascism, argues Tiernan Cannon in this article published first by Splinter. Since Hitler hosted the 1936 Olympics, boycotts have been demanded, and sometimes applied, on diverse occasions to try and stop apartheid South Africa, various Gulf states and others judged to be pariahs from hosting or participating in international sporting events. Israel clearly falls into that category and is currently the target of a campaign to suspend it from world football’s governing body FIFA.

Boycotting Israeli sports teams and institutions, in particular football, has been a feature of the BDS movement for more than a decade. This editor, quoted in Tiernan’s story, was involved in campaigning against Israel hosting the UEFA Under-21s football tournament in 2013. Also part of the campaign was Gazan footballer Mahmoud Sarsak, held in Israeli detention without charge or trial for three years from 2009, and only released after three months on hunger strike and an international campaign in his support.

NWI

This article was originally published by Splinter on Thu 29 May 2025. Read the original here.