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Kick Israel out of European football

Francisco Posadas | 25.06.2010 09:38 | Anti-militarism | Palestine | Terror War | World

Time to kick Israel out of European football ...... “The lesson of South Africa is that the sports boycott helped change the old politics.” – Jim Murphy, Labour MP for East Renfrewshire. “It is a question of boycotting racism, not sport, precisely in order to restore to sport all the magnanimity of its first purpose.” – Amadou Mahtar-M’Bow, Director -General of UNESCO to the International Conference on Sports Boycott Against South Africa in 1985. “The sights in the territories even turn the stomach of someone who grew up under apartheid. The occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It’s a monstrousness I’d never seen before.” – Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s minister for intelligence services in 2007.

Israel’s New Humanitarianism
Israel’s New Humanitarianism


“After four decades of Israeli occupation, the infrastructure and superstructure of apartheid have been put in place. Outside the never-never land of mainstream American Jewry and U.S. media, this reality is barely disputed.” – American academic Norman Finkelstein.
In 2007 the courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy travelled to South Africa to attend a UN peace conference, during the visit Levy, who writes for the Haaretz newspaper, met the country’s Jewish intelligence services minister, Ronnie Kasrils. Kasrils, who had personally visited the Occupied Territories, spoke of his dismay at what he saw as a grim history revisited: “When we saw on television the drama going on in your country, the oppressive pictures of the methods you use toward the Palestinians, the uprooting of trees, the tanks entering Jenin, and the old woman weeping over the demolition of her house and crying ‘The Jews, the Jews’ – it’s just like what my grandmother used to tell me about the pogroms: The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks are coming. I’m trying to say: It’s not the Jews, it’s Zionism that’s doing this. So I decided to get up and say something. I found this in the Jewish tradition: to open your mouth, in the name of conscience.” Kasrils rightly recognised that the evils of Apartheid had not died out with the redemption of his own country, they were alive and flourishing in a nation he thought of as the Jewish spiritual home.
In 2002 another veteran anti-Apartheid campaigner voiced his distress after a visit to the Holy Land. In a speech at a US conference called Ending the Oppression, Archbishop Desmond Tutu informed delegates that what he had seen was Apartheid, nothing less. “It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa,” he informed his audiance. “The humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about”. He continued: “Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions?” The question eight years later may be considered rhetorical. Since Tutu visited the West Bank, Israel has undergone a dramatic and fundamental shift to the extreme right, allowing previous racist pariahs such as Avigdor Lieberman to crawl from under their rocks, slithering into the mainstream to occupy positions of high office; foreign minister in Leiberman’s case.
If you have never heard of him, a fellow rightist Zionist, Martin Peretz editor-in-chief of The New Republic, called Leiberman “a neo-fascist”, “a certified gangster” and “the Israeli equivalent of Jörg Haider”. Ophir Pines-Paz, the minister for science, culture and sport resigned when Leiberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, was included by Olmert in his coalition government. Annoucing his resignation Pines-Paz declared: “The moment the government decided to allow the inclusion of Lieberman and his party, whose leaders are infected with racist and anti-democratic statements, I am left with no other choice.” Since then the grip of the extreme right on the Israeli political system has strengthened and Avigdor Lieberman is now surrounded by colleagues who seem determined to out-bid him in the political sewer race as they continually seek ways to strip Israel’s Arabs of their citizenship. ............. MORE:  http://ramallahonline.com/?p=4572 ............. Israel’s crimes in Gaza and Lebanon are well known, equally well known, although clouded in a smokescreen of a massive IDF disinformation campaign, is the crushing of the Freedom Flotilla’s attempt to break the inhuman blockade of Gaza. Not only has Israel embraced extremism internally, it has also thrown off even the faint traces of restraint that governed its external behaviour. Israel now is a rogue state, protected from repercussions by the US and thus emboldened to further extremism. Well, repercussions are required, and if the US will not allow the international community to impose these through the UN (whose resolutions Israel flouts with impunity), then the international community must seek other ways to reign in Israel, and by doing so aid the forces of Jewish liberalism that oppose the extremism of Zionism. A sporting boycott of Israel is long overdue, a start can be made by removing Israel from both European national and club competitions. It will not in itself bring about change, but as we witnessed with Apartheid South Africa, it will certainly play its part. (The article was first published at ETimes.com)  http://ramallahonline.com/?p=4572

Picture: Israel’s New Humanitarianism ..........  http://ramallahonline.com/?p=4281

Francisco Posadas

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

Silly

25.06.2010 10:29

Your fight is with the government and military of Israel not it's football teams.

Perhaps British, Welsh, and Scottish team should be banned because the Labour government decided to start a war in Afghanistan and Iraq? Turkish teams banned because they kill civilians whilst bombing PKK positions? Ban the French, Germans, and Polish because they too have sent troops to Afghanistan to kill people. In fact why doesn't everyone everywhere all around the world just stop playing sport until the world is purified?

Focus on the real causes, i.e. the governments, not random sports players.

Observer


Ab so lootly

25.06.2010 12:45

Israel isnt even in europe. why should they get to play in our club competitions and intl. qualifications anyway?

Football Fan


Question for "Observer"

25.06.2010 14:39

So, "Observer" - did you or did you not support the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa?

question


It's about legitimization

25.06.2010 15:01


>Israel isnt even in europe. why should they get to play in our club competitions and intl. >qualifications anyway?

As with the Eurovision Song Contest, it's just an attempt to legitimize the state of israel in the minds of Europeans.

Observer: are you not aware that israel denies transit to Palestinian football teams?

From wikipedia:

Israel's refusal to issue exit visas has resulted in players or in some case the entire team being unable to represent their country. In November 2006, all players based inside Palestine were denied exit visas. The AFC, Asia's governing football body decided to cancel the match since both teams had been eliminated from the competition by virtue of their previous results against China and Iraq.[8] In October 2007, the second leg of a crucial World Cup qualifier between Palestine and Singapore was not played due to Palestine's inability to obtain an exit visa. AFC and FIFA decided not to reschedule the match despite protests from Palestine's FA.

Israeli Authorities dealt another blow to the National team when in May 2008, the team was not allowed to travel to participate in the 2008 AFC Challenge Cup, a competition where Palestine was expected to contend for the title and receive a berth at the 2011 Asian Cup.

Some of the athletes have been directly affected by the Arab–Israeli conflict. Tariq al Quto was killed by the Israel Defense Force,[10] and striker Ziyad Al-Kord was banned from travelling and had his house destroyed

Sue


Israel denies transit to Palestinian football teams

25.06.2010 16:31

then why didn't they leave by the crossing at the Egyptian border - Rafah?

confused


not possible

25.06.2010 22:39

As far as I know the Palestinian football teams competing for these titles have in the past been from the West Bank. If you live in the West Bank you can't get to Gaza so can't cross at Rafah...To get to Rafah people from the West Bank would still need Israeli permission.

confusing?


BOYCOTT ISRAEL

26.06.2010 10:16

" then why didn't they leave by the crossing at the Egyptian border - Rafah?"

This is the typical tactic of Zionist propagandists (many of them paid for this service, by the way)... distract from Israel's horrid record of human-rights abuses by pointing out that "other" countries do the same.

Aside from the fact that 2 wrongs do not make a right, singling out Egypt in this case is particularly ironic as Egypt's dictator Mubarak is only held in power by the same forces that keep Israel alive: USA imperialism and Zionist financial powers. In fact, Egypt is brought and paid for by these powers, and hence brags of "normal" relationship with Israel.

Do we also want to be complicit in supporting a racist regime like Israel? This is not a "normal" nor "democratic" country and as such deserves not to be treated as such until it begins acting with common human decency.

ninetto


Odd thing really ...

26.06.2010 18:47

Israel is not a normal nor a democratic country [don't ask for an explanation, ninetto sez so], and Egypt is a poor dupe, putty in the hands of those Zionists. Remarkable really, since there are over 80 million people in Egypt and only 7 million in Israel.

not so confused


Returning to original point

27.06.2010 05:56

It's not actually in Europe regardless of any political views they shouldn't be able to compete in European club football it's stupid. That goes for bloody Eurovision song contest as well. If Israel just ended the occupation tomorrow they still shouldn't be able to compete in any competition of ANY sort where the condition is the team or player is from Europe.

I've got an idea why doesn't UK invade and occupy Luxemberg, Belgium (it's a non country anyway according to that UKIP Mule, Switzerland and a few other defenceless nations occupy them, persecute them get the rest of Europe pissed off with us and then England can apply to qualify for the World Cup as part of The Asia,Oceania region then we wouldn't have to worry about qualifying every year.

It makes about as much sense.



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