How Palestine “won” the World Cup

The power of sport to influence politics has always been a feature of international sporting events, as has the hypocrisy of governments, New Zealand included, when it comes to issues of human rights.

Despite neither Israel nor Palestine being at the Fifa World Cup, the issue of Palestine has been the most visible political issue on display.

“The World Cup isn’t over yet, but Palestine has already won” is just one of the many headlines around the world talking about the high visibility of Palestine at the event and the cross-global support Palestinians enjoy in their indigenous struggle for human rights and self-determination.

Social media is awash with dozens of amusing video clips where Israeli journalists attempt to interview fans outside venues, only to be drowned out by passionate messages of support for Palestine as soon as they identify as Israeli.

“Palestine, Palestine – free Palestine” is the typical refrain – not just from Arab fans, but from soccer supporters from all corners of the globe.

It didn’t start out that way.

The global campaign to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion and occupation of Ukraine dominated the run-up to the World Cup.

The world governing body for soccer, FIFA, and the European soccer federation, UAFA, suspended Russian national and club teams from international soccer within four days of the invasion.

Many European teams, in particular, have displayed Ukrainian colours, and displays of support for Ukraine were officially sanctioned by the cup organisers.

In response, soccer fans at the World Cup have normalised support for Palestine as the West has normalised support for Ukraine. The outpouring of love and human connection with Palestine cannot be ignored.

Western hypocrisy was neatly summed up by Egyptian squash player Ali Faraj, who won the Optasia Squash Championship in London earlier this year, saying: “We have never been allowed to speak about politics in sports, but all of a sudden, it’s allowed.

“So [now] that we are allowed, I hope that people also look at the oppression everywhere in the world.

“I mean, the Palestinians have been going through that for the past 74 years, but I guess because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the media of the West we couldn’t talk about it, but now that we can talk about Ukraine, we can talk about the Palestinians, so please keep that in mind.”

Other human rights issues have also featured at the cup. The treatment of migrant workers and the lack of LGBTQ rights in Qatar have been in the spotlight.

Even US Secretary of state Antony Blinken, who sees the US as the final arbiter on which human rights are important (certainly not Palestinian rights!), criticised the ban on teams wearing rainbow colours.

He said the ban was “concerning” and a restriction on “freedom of expression”.

Deeper problems with selectively calling out human rights issues have been identified by Navid Zarrinnal, a Stanford University academic who says “Western supremacist attitudes and cultural imperialism” are being showcased at the World Cup – “disguised”, as usual, as “advocacy for human rights”.

Zarrinnal says the people who are “parachuting into Qatar to lecture them about gay rights” are ignorant of the long history of homosexuality in the Arab world, which is “reflected in their poetry, visual art, and social history”.

All human rights are important, and selectively calling them out according to Western interests should have no place for this country which, quite rightly, condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supports migrant rights (in Qatar at least, if not here at home), and LGBTQ rights, but is silent about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the longest military occupation in modern history.

Politics at the 2022 World Cup are a far cry from earlier times when “keep politics out of sport” was a mantra which enabled people to enjoy sport while ignoring human rights abuses.

For Palestine, it’s also a far cry from 2016 when Glasgow’s Celtic Football Club was fined €10,000 (NZ$19,200) because their fans displayed Palestinian flags at Celtic Park during a game with Israeli team Hapoel Beer-Sheva in a Champions League qualification match.

Celtic fans set up a crowdfunding page to pay the fine and raised vastly more than the amount of the fine, which was then used “to provide basic medical supplies to conflict-hit Gaza and some football kit to enable young people of Aida refugee camp in the West Bank to start up a team”.

It’s hard to see the politics genie being put back in the sport bottle now and neither should it be. Human rights – all breaches of human rights – are a common cause for all of humanity.

At the football World Cup, the “winning” Palestinian flag is not just a symbol of international solidarity with Palestinians – it is also a symbol of our own hypocrisy.