Kieran Shannon: Sport loses moral authority with silence and inaction on Palestine 

It’s a year to the day since it started: after the horrendous massacre of October 7 came the furious retaliation of October 8.

It hasn’t stopped since, only spread.

And sport in all that time has been either unable or unwilling to stem it.

Last Thursday was indicative of its tendency to not want to know.

The council of FIFA, guardians of the biggest sport in the world, had been expected to decide on the Palestinian FA’s request that Israel be suspended from world football. Instead after meeting in Zurich, it announced that its disciplinary committee would initiate an investigation into “the alleged offence of discrimination”, based on the recommendation of its “independent experts”.

At face value it sounded a reasonable measure, to give, in the words of Gianni Infantino himself, “due diligence” on such a “very sensitive matter”.

Except this isn’t the first time FIFA have deferred a decision on this issue. The Palestinian FA tabled this motion back in April, and at FIFA’s Congress in May outlined how the Israel Football Association was violating FIFA statues by allowing at least eight teams located in illegal settlements on Palestinian territory play in its domestic league.

FIFA were meant to make a call on the issue in July at an extraordinary meeting of its council, only to put it off until a meeting of the council on August 31. Then that was moved to October 3 when again they kicked for touch, not even giving a timeline when play would resume and the results of the investigation would be announced.

Such obfuscation was not lost on Katarina Pijetlovic, a professor at the Lisbon Catholic Global school of law and an author on EU sports law.

She noted that the “independent experts” that FIFA referred to in their statement are two FIFA employees based in Switzerland: its mediator and the professor of its university programme.

Both of them had several months to deliberate on a long advisory opinion letter from two UN special rapporteurs outlining how the Israel FA and FIFA itself by extension, were in breach of international law by allowing those clubs play in its leagues while illegally occupying Palestinian settlements in the West Bank.

She also reminded people that even if FIFA’s disciplinary sub-committee ruled in favour of sanctions against Israeli football, FIFA itself could and likely would still ignore or reject it, as it did a similar committee on the same issue back in 2017; with Infantino being a self-recognised friend of Israel, what are the chances that he’ll someday feel Palestinian?

All the while FIFA procrastinates, the body count in Gaza rises.

As far back as February, Pijetlovic highlighted how FIFA’s indifference or at least inaction on the Israel-Palestine question contrasted starkly to its decisiveness when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Speaking at the international Play the Game conference in Trondheim, Norway, she noted that within four hours of Russia’s invasion FIFA and other leading sports bodies had condemned the act and within four days had suspended Russian athletes and teams from international sport – “the right thing to do,” she added.

In those four days 14 children had been killed – 14 too many. Two years into that conflict 560 children had been killed. By that same February of 2024 over 13,500 children had been killed in Gaza. “Nothing,” she’d tell delegates, “can justify it.” Israel of course will try, arguing that they are the Ukraine, not the Russia, in this conflict. But the proportion of deaths since October 7 to those on October 7 defeats that argument. The death toll now is over 40,000 and among the multiple casualties has been sport and sportspeople.

According to the Palestinian FA, over 300 football players have been killed since October 8, including 84 children who were part of Gaza’s youth football academies. Their football league has been inactive since. Only one of its stadia remains, the Al-Dorra, used to shelter thousands of displaced people.

When the Palestinian national women’s team played in Dublin back in May, one of their players recalled a game in Ramallah where the IDF gas bombed the pitch. “We couldn’t breathe. We had to stop playing.” Other players have been shot by them in the foot. “And yet,” as Pijetlovic pointed out in Trondheim, “FIFA, like UEFA and the IOC, are still silent while the Israeli government is literally killing off a member association.” Another such major governing body that has been largely indifferent to the conflict is FIBA, as Irish basketball has come to know. You’ll remember that Eurobasket qualifier; how Ireland refused to host the Israel team on security grounds, but agreed to play them last February in neutral Latvia, much to chagrin of both the Israelis (for the choice of venue) and various Irish pro-Palestinian groups (for playing the game at all).

On the eve of the game the Israeli player Do’or Sar accused the Irish team of “being quite anti-Semitic”, prompting the Irish team to refuse to engage in the usual exchange of gifts and handshakes and opting to stay by their own bench for the national anthems. The day after the game FIBA Europe’s executive director Kamil Novak told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that his body would await a report from the match commissioner before making any judgements regarding incidents like Sar’s remark or guns and the Israeli military featuring in photographs with the Israel team.

Basketball Ireland did not receive a full copy of the subsequent report from FIBA Europe. However, following a query from the Irish Examiner, Basketball Ireland have revealed that they themselves were issued with an official warning for unsportsmanlike conduct.

In a statement issued to the Irish Examiner, BI write, “Basketball Ireland’s players and staff elected not to undertake the formal pre-match protocols… As stated at the time, this was due to the unfounded accusations of antisemitism made prior to the fixture by an Israeli player and published on the Israeli Basketball Association’s website and social media channels.

“As a result of Ireland not taking part in the pre-or post-game formalities, the independent judge appointed by FIBA Europe cited a breach of article 110 of FIBA Internal Regulations – ‘Parties shall not engage in unsportsmanlike conduct.’ Basketball Ireland were issued with an official warning.” 

Sar, meanwhile, was free to play Ireland again during the summer in an astonishingly low-key (almost deliberately so) 3x3 tournament in Freiburg, scoring nine of Israel’s points in a 15-9 win.

That though was hardly surprising. Later that same month the IOC didn’t sanction Israel’s flag-bearer, eventual judo medallist Peter Paltchik, for posting on social media pictures of bombs destined for Gaza “from me to you with pleasure”.

And so by not disapproving of such actions, such major sporting bodies are essentially legitimising them. While they have various charters proclaiming, like FIFA’s Articles 3 and 4, that they are “committed to respecting internationally recognised human rights” and “prohibit discrimination of any kind on any grounds”, they are highly selective in applying them. Like Infantino and even Novak, they may claim to be sporting and not political organisations, but by opting to enforce them in some instances and not in others, they, as Pijetlovic observes, “lose the claim to political neutrality whichever way you want to define it.” For sure various sportspeople and sports supporters have made a stand and made some impact. Think of that magical night in Dalymount last May when Bohemians hosted the Palestinian national women’s team. There was barely a dry eye in the ground, including those of the Palestine players who spoke about crying on the field at the sight of their flag and national anthem being openly displayed and celebrated.

But while events like that and movements like Irish Sport for Palestine have offered the Palestinian people solidarity and support and even temporary relief and respite, sport as a whole has failed to facilitate or even encourage the peace and ceasefire that they crave.

Words like even ‘genocide’ seem to have lost their power; at this point the terminology of Tim Robbins’ Harlan Ogilvy seems more apt: “This is not a war any more than there’s a war between men and maggots. This is an extermination.” As the columnist Mark O’Connell recently noted, the language of human rights and democracy mean nothing. The west as we know it has lost any illusion of moral authority or credibility.

Not least because sport has also reflected and even shaped that lack of moral courage and authority.