More than 30 legal experts have called on the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to bar Israel and its clubs from competitions over the atrocities in Gaza.
The letter, addressed to UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin on Thursday, said banning Israel is “imperative”, citing a report by United Nations investigators that confirmed Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.
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It urged the football governing body and its members to “fulfil their legal and moral obligations to uphold international law, and move forward with an immediate and complete ban of Israeli football”.
The letter highlighted the damage that Israel is inflicting on the sport in Gaza. At least 421 Palestinian footballers have been killed since Israel began its military offensive in October 2023, and the letter explained that Israel’s bombing campaign is “systematically destroying Gaza’s football infrastructure”.
“These acts have decimated an entire generation of athletes, eroding the fabric of Palestinian sport,” it read.
“The failure of the Israel Football Association (IFA) to challenge these violations implicates it in this system of oppression, rendering its participation in UEFA competitions untenable.”
The letter’s signatories included Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, the executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, as well as several former UN experts and scholars in international law.
“UEFA must not be complicit in sports-washing such flagrant breaches of international law, including but not limited to the act of genocide,” the statement said.
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It comes amid growing international outrage at Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed more than 66,000 people and turned most of the enclave into rubble.
A blockade on humanitarian aid in the territory has also sparked deadly hunger, leading to a declaration of famine in August for more than half a million people in Gaza.
Swift action against Russia
Craig Mokhiber, a former director for the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said allowing a country that commits genocide to participate in sports allows for its “normalisation”. That, in turn, “is an act of complicity”.
“We remember well the situation in apartheid South Africa, where the world unified to isolate the regime in order to change its behaviour, and that included – very importantly – sports boycotts and cultural boycotts,” Mokhiber told Al Jazeera.
The international football governing body FIFA suspended South Africa in 1961 due to the country’s apartheid regime. The move was seen as a historic triumph for the global movement to end the violence and segregation.
More recently, in 2022, both FIFA and UEFA suspended Russia within days of it launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s a stunning level of hypocrisy and double standards that they reacted so quickly and so forcefully with regard to Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, and yet have been dragging their feet in trying to avoid action when it comes to a full-blown genocide by a regime that has been certified as practising apartheid,” said Mokhiber.
Palestinian rights advocates have been calling to ban Israel from world football competitions for decades, in part because Israel has professional teams based in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
FIFA’s rules unambiguously state that “member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval”.
Yet, Israel’s clubs and national teams continue to participate in international competitions through FIFA and UEFA.
Although based in West Asia, Israel joined UEFA in 1994 amid Arab and Muslim boycotts of its teams.
Growing push to ban Israel
As the attacks on Gaza continue, Israel’s national team is participating in the European World Cup qualifiers, and its clubs are competing in UEFA’s continental tournaments, with Maccabi Tel Aviv FC featured in this season’s Europa League.
But calls for ostracising Israel from world football have been gaining momentum in recent months.
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Football fans from Glasgow to Paris to Rome to Bilbao have been flying Palestinian flags to show solidarity with Gaza, despite restrictions against such displays.
After Israel killed Palestinian football legend Suleiman al-Obeid in an August air strike, there were also appeals for the violence to end.
One such call came from UEFA itself. The federation published the late footballer’s photo on the social media platform X with the caption: “Farewell to Suleiman al-Obeid, the ‘Palestinian Pele’. A talent who gave hope to countless children, even in the darkest of times.”
But Liverpool star Mohamed Salah criticised UEFA for failing to mention who killed him. “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?” Salah wrote in a response.
Days later, the pre-game presentation of the UEFA Super Cup featured a banner that said: “Stop killing civilians. Stop killing children.”
The UEFA Foundation also included two Palestinian refugee children in the medal ceremony.
According to multiple news reports from Europe, UEFA was going to vote to suspend Israel soon, but the move was postponed after United States President Donald Trump released a ceasefire plan for Gaza.
Thursday’s letter warned UEFA that Trump’s proposal does not absolve the federation of its responsibility to ban Israel.
“This is because, while the plan purports to offer a pathway to peace, in reality it undermines international law, Palestinian sovereignty, and the principles of self-determination,” it read.
“It does not impose any obligations on the State of Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It also fails to address the legal consequences of the genocide in Gaza or make any demands of Israel to provide reparations to the Palestinians. Peace cannot be achieved without justice and accountability.”
Human rights nonprofit weighs in
On Wednesday, Amnesty International also called on FIFA and UEFA to suspend Israel.
“As Israel’s national football team gears up for World Cup qualifiers against Norway and Italy, Israel continues to perpetrate genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the group’s chief, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.
“At the same time, Israel is brutally expanding its illegal settlements and legitimizing illegal outposts in the West Bank as part of its unlawful occupation of Palestinian Territory.”
Since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, no country or club in Europe has withdrawn outright in protest from a game against Israeli teams despite the growing international pleas to shun the country.
A boycott of a match against Israel would give Israel an automatic 3-0 victory.
Ashish Prashar – a campaign director at Game Over Israel, the group that helped organise Thursday’s letter – highlighted football’s role in building a global community, as the most popular sport in the world by far.
“Culture is the way to normalise that in a way that is more valuable to the perpetrators of the genocide than even having a seat at the UN,” Prashar told Al Jazeera.
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“So, it is imperative to follow the model that was put before us with apartheid South Africa, of knocking Israel out of culture, but specifically sports and starting with football.”
Game Over Israel has been leading a media campaign underscoring the genocide in Gaza and calling for a football boycott of the country.
Last month, the group sponsored a billboard in New York City’s bustling Times Square that said, “Israel is committing genocide. Soccer federations: Boycott Israel.”
‘FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems’
Israel’s top ally, the US, is co-hosting the World Cup next year, and President Trump has been chummy with FIFA chief Gianni Infantino.
In light of the leaders’ warm relationship, Prashar said he is not optimistic that the international federation will make a move against Israel. But he added that individual countries can force FIFA’s hand if they announce boycotts of Israel.
On Thursday, Infantino suggested that FIFA is not ready to penalise the US ally.
“FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems, but it can and must promote football around the world by harnessing its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values,” he said in a statement.
Mokhiber, the former UN expert, said football should bring people together around positive values, not around a country committing a genocide.
“We know very well how close Infantino is to Donald Trump,” Mokhiber said. “I’m not surprised at all he would make that kind of a statement. I would ask him to look at his history books and see that bans and boycotts in football have been a part of FIFA since the very beginning.”
Prashar also noted the historical precedents and questioned where FIFA would draw the line.
“Gianni Infantino is normalising genocide,” he told Al Jazeera. “Would he have let Nazi Germany play while they were committing the genocide? That is the question I would ask him.”
FIFA and UEFA did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
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