The ‘Game Over Israel’ campaign calls on FIFA and UEFA to expel Israel from world football, denouncing its abuses and the complicity of international bodies.
By: Maryam Qarehgozlou
Last week, Mohammed Ramez al-Sultan, a 14-year-old soccer player, was killed along with 14 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on his home in northern Gaza City.
Al-Hilal Club later wrote on its Facebook account that Al-Sultan was one of the graduates of its academy, accredited by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), world soccer’s governing body, which has been harshly criticized for not taking any action against Israel.
On 6 September, Malik Abu al-Amaren, another young footballer from the Al-Hilal club, was shot dead by the Israeli occupying forces while waiting for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza.
In August, Suleiman al-Obeid, a soccer player known as the “Palestinian Pelé,” was killed in southern Gaza when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, according to the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).
Mohammed Barakat, known as the “Legend of Khan Younis,” and Ahmad Abu al-Atta were also renowned Palestinian soccer players who died in Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza.
The Israeli army has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the past 23 months since the genocidal war began. That figure includes hundreds of athletes and athletic directors.
More than one Palestinian athlete dies every day in Gaza due to the genocidal Israeli-American war.
PFA President Jibril Rajoub said Palestinian sports are suffering an “unprecedented catastrophe” following the loss of 774 members of the sports community due to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
The balance, he explained, includes 355 soccer players, 277 from other sports federations and 142 scouts, in addition to 119 missing and presumed dead. The PFA warned that the actual number is likely higher, as many victims remain under rubble in areas where access is restricted.
In December 2023, Israeli forces also converted Gaza’s 9000-capacity football stadium into a makeshift detention camp for Palestinians, where many were tortured and killed.
The destruction of infrastructure, coupled with the indiscriminate killing of athletes, has prompted global calls for the suspension of Israeli sports—particularly its soccer clubs—from international tournaments, including major leagues.
Those calls are now coming together in a popular campaign that is spreading around the world.
Based on growing demands globally to exclude Israel’s football programs from global competition, a coalition of pro-Palestinian 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 soccer 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 ban Israeli players.
The pressure campaign aims to push FIFA and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) to suspend Israel from the international stage.
The campaign comes less than a year before the FIFA World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, and following a report by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry declaring that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The campaign and its participants
The campaign has received backing from high-profile figures, including world-renowned former footballers.
Former French footballer Eric Cantona, former English footballer and BBC commentator Gary Lineker, Italian football big man Walter Zenga, and Irish actor and Game of Thrones star Liam Cunningham are among those supporting the initiative.
Other prominent backers include artist and activist Tadhg Hickey, journalist and author Matt Kennard, former Greek finance minister and economist Yanis Varoufakis, musician Bobby Vylan, and Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. In video messages, social media posts and public events, supporters of the campaign have voiced strong criticism of international soccer bodies, including FIFA, urging them to ban Israeli soccer.
Ashish Prashar, the campaign manager and former adviser to the U.K.’s West Asia Peace Envoy, said global soccer institutions should feel deep shame for continuing to legitimize Israel’s involvement.
“Football is the first dominoes,” he said in an interview with Press TV, adding that triggering the isolation of the Israeli regime in world football would cause a domino effect that would end the genocide.
“The Eurovision Song Contest is happening as we speak. [Later] the arts will leave. Other things will go. If football leaves, the cultural dominoes are huge,” he said. “There should be no normalization in abnormal times,” Prashar said. “And what is more normal than people playing football?” he asked.
He criticized FIFA President Gianni Infantino, calling him “immoral” and “a friend of [the U.S. president] Donald Trump,” who ignores Palestinian suffering.
Actor Cunningham, in a video message, urged supporters to take direct action rather than wait for bodies such as FIFA and UEFA to ban the Israeli regime’s football teams.
He called on Ireland fans to pressure their football federation to cut all ties with Israeli teams and players. “This is how you will show your solidarity,” he remarked.
UN rapporteur Falk stated that Israel has long used sport as a tool to hide its human rights abuses and that international institutions have been complicit.
“For many years, Israel has used culture and sport to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights, and sport’s governing bodies have been shamefully complicit in this genocide. It is completely legitimate and morally imperative to demand that the football federations of Europe and the world boycott Israel. Normality is complicity in this abnormal time of prolonged genocide,” he stressed.
Craig Mokhiber, a former United Nations human rights official and specialist in international human rights law, who resigned two years ago due to the world body’s failure to prevent genocide in Gaza, stressed that the devastating war in 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, shackled by apartheid, is being exterminated before our eyes. None of us can say we didn’t 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,” he said
Fan groups are also expressing outrage at the lack of action. Love Rovers Hate Racism, affiliated with Shamrock Rovers FC, criticised football institutions for betraying their values by refusing to act.
“We are approaching the second anniversary of the genocide in Gaza. What else is there to say? Why haven’t the football federations boycotted Israel? They are supposed to represent football and the fans. It is incomprehensible and unacceptable. They should be ashamed. We demand that they act now, boycott Israel and remove them from our camps,” 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 expel Israel from all football and condemning the double standards that allow Israel to compete while committing genocide in Gaza.
Cantona stressed: “I played for France and Manchester United. I know that international football is more than just a sport. It’s culture, it’s political, it’s soft power.”
“Four days after Russia started a war in Ukraine, FIFA and UEFA suspended Russia. We are now 716 days away from… genocide. And yet, Israel is still allowed to participate,” he specified.
“Why? Why are there double standards? FIFA and UEFA must suspend Israel. Clubs around the world must refuse to play against Israeli teams. Current players everywhere must refuse to play against Israeli teams,” he said.
Growing calls for boycott of Israel
The push to isolate Israel in international sports, particularly in football, is also gaining traction among governments and associations globally.
Spain’s prime minister recently called for a ban on Israeli equipment, aligning himself with his government’s cancellation of a €700 million arms contract with the Israeli regime.
Last month, Italy’s Football Coaches Association urged its federation to pressure UEFA and FIFA to suspend Israel from the global competition.
The Norwegian Football Association announced that it would donate ticket proceeds from its match against Israel on October 11 to humanitarian aid for Gaza.
International legal experts told FIFA in June that Israel and its soccer federation were violating international law by holding professional matches in the occupied Palestinian territories.
On Wednesday, former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and local Aston Villa MP Ayoub Khan demanded that UEFA, the government or police “urgently” cancel the club’s Europa League match 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 general secretary Theodore Theodoridis, calling for Israel’s “immediate suspension” from European football.
Palestinian soccer authorities have repeatedly pressured FIFA to act, but without success.
In May 2024, they 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 proposal.
However, FIFA refused to hold an immediate vote, arguing that it needed an independent legal assessment, which many saw as a delaying tactic.
The task was handed over to its Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee, which is expected to prepare a report for the FIFA Council.
FIFA is continuing its slow investigation into the PFA’s complaints, which are now a year old. It has been criticized for delaying the treatment of longstanding PFA complaints, including those of Israeli teams playing in illegal settlements in the West Bank and systematic discrimination against Palestinian athletes.
Meanwhile, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has been heavily criticized for his close ties to pro-Israel U.S. President Donald Trump, securing office space in Trump Tower and being singled out for undermining the spirit of the World Cup in favor of political alliances.
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