‘Game Over Israel’: A new campaign calls on FIFA, UEFA to kick out Israel from world football

By Maryam Qarehgozlou  

Last week, 14-year-old football player Mohammed Ramez Al-Sultan was killed along with 14 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the north of Gaza City.

Al-Hilal Club later wrote on Facebook that Al-Sultan was one of the graduates of its academy, accredited by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world football's governing body that has come under fire for taking no action against Israel.

On September 6, Malik Abu Al-Amaren, another youth player for Al-Hilal football club, was shot dead by Israeli occupation forces while waiting for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza.

In August, Suleiman al-Obeid, a footballer known as the “Palestinian Pelé,” was killed in southern Gaza when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, according to the Palestine Football Association (PFA).

Mohammed Barakat, known as the “Legend of Khan Younis,” and Ahmad Abu al-Atta were also among the well-known Palestinian football players killed in Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza.

The Israeli military has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 23 months since the genocidal war began. That figure includes hundreds of athletes and sports managers.

More than one athlete is killed in Gaza every day amid the Israeli-American genocidal war.

PFA president Jibril Rajoub said Palestinian sports are enduring an “unprecedented catastrophe” after losing 774 members of the sports community to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The toll, he explained, included 355 football players, 277 from other sports federations and 142 scouts, in addition to 119 missing and presumably dead. PFA warned that the real number is likely higher as many victims remain under rubble in areas where access is restricted.

In December 2023, Israeli forces also turned Gaza’s 9,000-seat football stadium into a makeshift detention camp for Palestinians, where many were tortured and killed.

The destruction of infrastructure, combined with the indiscriminate killing of athletes, has fueled global calls for the suspension of Israeli sports — particularly its football clubs — from international tournaments, including the premier leagues. 

Those calls are now coalescing into a popular campaign sweeping across the world

Building on growing demands worldwide for Israel’s football programs to be excluded from global competition, a coalition of pro-Palestine and labor organizations, fan associations, athletes, celebrities, and human rights groups has launched the “Game Over Israel” campaign.

The initiative, which began last week with a billboard in New York’s Times Square, urges national football federations in Belgium, England, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Scotland, and Spain to refuse to play against Israel’s national and club teams and to bar Israeli players.

The pressure campaign aims to push FIFA and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) into suspending Israel from the international stage.

It comes less than a year before the FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the US, Mexico, and Canada, and following a UN Commission of Inquiry report declaring that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The campaign and its participants

The campaign has drawn support from high-profile figures, including former footballers, worldwide.

Former French football player Eric Cantona, English former footballer and BBC commentator Gary Lineker, Italian goalkeeping great Walter Zenga, and Irish actor and “Game of Thrones” star Liam Cunningham are among those backing the initiative.

Other prominent endorsers include performer and activist Tadhg Hickey, journalist and author Matt Kennard, former Greek finance minister and economist Yanis Varoufakis, musician Bobby Vylan, and Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.

In video messages, social media posts, and public events, campaign supporters have voiced strong criticism of international football bodies, including FIFA, urging them to ban Israeli football.

Ashish Prashar, the campaign manager and a former adviser to the UK’s West Asia Peace Envoy, said global football institutions should feel deep shame for continuing to legitimize Israel’s participation.

“Football is the first domino,” he said in an interview with Press TV, adding that triggering the regime’s ostracism across global football would set off a knock-on effect that would end the genocide.

“Eurovision is going as we speak. [Then] art will go. Other things will go. If football goes, the cultural dominoes are huge," he asserted. "There should be no normalization in abnormal times,” Prashar said. “And what is more normal than people playing football.”

He slammed FIFA President Gianni Infantino as “immoral” and a “friend of [US President] Donald Trump” who ignores Palestinian suffering.

Actor Cunningham, in a video message, urged supporters to take direct action rather than wait for governing bodies like FIFA and UEFA to ban the regime's football teams.

He appealed to fans in Ireland to press their football association to cut all ties with Israeli teams and players. “That’s how to show your solidarity,” he said.

UN rapporteur Falk stated that Israel has long used sports as a tool to mask its rights abuses and that international institutions have been complicit.

“For years, Israel has used culture and sports to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights. Sporting governing bodies have been shamefully complicit during this genocide.

“It is both legitimate and a moral imperative to demand that football federations across Europe and the world boycott Israel. Normalcy is complicity in this abnormal time of prolonged genocide.”

Craig Mokhiber, a former United Nations human rights official and specialist in international human rights law, who resigned two years ago over the world body’s failure to prevent the genocide in Gaza, stressed that the devastating war on Gaza represents a historic moral test, and that sport could be a vehicle for resistance.

“We are living through a dark moment in history in which a people, locked in the chains of apartheid, are being exterminated before our eyes. None of us will be able to say we did not know. Inaction in such circumstances is complicity," he noted.

“But we do have the power to act. Sport is a powerful social force, and football, ‘the beautiful game,’ can be a powerful channel for action. Demand that your football federation, and all federations, boycott Israel. Keep football beautiful.”

Fan groups are also voicing their outrage over the lack of action. Love Rovers Hate Racism, affiliated with Shamrock Rovers FC, criticized football institutions for betraying their values by refusing to act.

“We are approaching the two-year mark of the genocide in Gaza. What more is there to say? Why haven’t football federations boycotted Israel? They’re supposed to represent football and the fans. It is unfathomable and unconscionable. They should be ashamed. We demand they act now, boycott Israel, and get them off our pitches,” they said.

French football legend Eric Cantona reiterated the campaign’s demands at the Together for Palestine concert in London, urging FIFA and UEFA to kick Israel out of all football and condemning the double standards that allow it to compete while committing genocide in Gaza.

Cantona said, “I played for France and Manchester United. I know that international football is more than just a sport. It is culture, it is political, it is soft power.

“Four days after Russia started a war in Ukraine, FIFA and UEFA suspended Russia. We are now 716 days into...genocide. And yet, Israel continues to be allowed to participate.

“Why? Why are there double standards? FIFA and UEFA must suspend Israel. Clubs everywhere must refuse to play Israeli teams. Current players everywhere must refuse to play against Israeli teams.”

Growing boycott calls against Israel

Momentum for isolating Israel in international sports, particularly football, is also building among governments and associations across the world.

Spain’s Prime Minister recently called for Israeli teams to be banned, aligning with his government’s cancellation of a €700 million arms deal with the Israeli regime.

The Italian Football Coaches’ Association last month urged its federation to push UEFA and FIFA for the suspension of Israel from global competition.

Norway’s Football Federation announced it would donate ticket revenues from its October 11 match against Israel to Gaza humanitarian aid.

International legal experts in June told FIFA that Israel and its football association were violating international law by holding professional matches on the occupied Palestinian territory.

On Wednesday, former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Aston Villa’s local MP Ayoub Khan demanded that UEFA, the Government, or police “urgently” cancel the club’s Europa League fixture against Maccabi Tel Aviv, hold it behind closed doors, or move it to a neutral country.

Irish club Bohemians also wrote to UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin and Secretary-General Theodore Theodoridis, calling for Israel’s “immediate suspension” from European football.

Palestinian football authorities have repeatedly pressed FIFA to act, but to no avail.

In May 2024, it submitted a formal proposal to the FIFA Congress calling for Israel’s expulsion over its violations of Palestinian sports rights. The Asian Football Confederation backed the move.

Yet FIFA declined to hold an immediate vote, instead saying it required an independent legal assessment, which many saw as a delaying tactic.

The task was handed to its Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee, which is expected to prepare a report for the FIFA Council.

FIFA is still continuing its slow investigation into year-old complaints from the PFA. It has been criticized for dragging its feet on longstanding complaints from the PFA, including Israeli teams playing in illegal settlements in the West Bank and systematic discrimination against Palestinian athletes.

Meanwhile, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has come under fire for his close ties to pro-Israel US President Donald Trump, securing office space in Trump Tower and drawing criticism for undermining the spirit of the World Cup in favor of political alliances.

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