Rajoub shown red card by FIFA
FIFA has suspended the top official in Palestinian football, because he "incited hatred and violence" when he tried to turn international players against Israel.
FIFA has suspended the top official in Palestinian football, because he “incited hatred and violence” when he tried to turn international players against Israel.
The international football organisation just announced that it is sanctioning Jibril Rajoub because of the language he used when campaigning – successfully – for Argentina to cancel a June friendly match against Israel in Jerusalem.
Rajoub, who must now pay a fine of almost $30,000 and has found himself banned from matches for a year, had gleefully claimed that the world gave Israel a “red card” when the Israel-Argentina match was cancelled.
Shortly before the cancellation Rajoub called on football fans to “target” the Argentinian star Lionel Messi and burn Messi shirts and pictures.
A former militant who is senior in Palestinian politics as well as heading the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), he reportedly also said that Messi must not “serve as a means to beautify the fascist occupation’s image and its racist policy”.
Three years ago Rajoub tried to have Israel expelled from FIFA. “In a sense it’s ironic that he tried to kick Israel out of FIFA, and then found himself suspended from FIFA,” the Israeli activist lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told The AJN.
Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat HaDin not-for-profit organisation, which has been campaigning to have Rajoub expelled, called the FIFA decision a “big victory”, saying that he shows disdain for sporting values. “Sport is not supposed to be a violent area,” she commented.
Israel’s Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev went further, welcoming the decision and saying that Rajoub “was a terrorist and remained a terrorist”, and that he should be “behind bars and not in places of honour in football stadiums”.
There was also enthusiasm for the suspension in the Diaspora. Robert Singer, CEO of the World Jewish Congress, said: “Over the years, the PFA has repeatedly demonised Israel, politicised sports, and encouraged violence, under the guidance of its chairman, Jibril Rajoub. I hope that Mr Rajoub’s suspension will make it clear that sport is meant to bring people together regardless of politics, race, or religion.”
The PFA complained that the suspension is “absurd” and “unproportionate”.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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