The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, calls upon football fans, supporters, athletes, sports clubs and federations participating in World Cup activities to transform stadiums and sporting venues into platforms of solidarity with the Palestinian people and expressions of global popular outrage in the face of the siege and the ongoing genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, as well as the U.S.-Zionist aggression against Lebanon, Iran, and the peoples of the region.
The world is witnessing one of the most horrific crimes in contemporary history, as the Zionist entity, with direct U.S. and Western support, continues its open war against the Palestinian people, targeting civilians, children, women, hospitals, schools, shelters, and infrastructure in a failed attempt to break the will of the Palestinian people and their resistance.
International sporting institutions cannot continue to ignore Zionist crimes against Palestinian sport. We call for the expulsion of “Israel” from the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), the International Olympic Committee, and all international sports federations and organizations, and for the imposition of comprehensive sporting isolation on it as a state of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid.
Occupation forces have killed nearly one thousand Palestinian athletes during the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, and have destroyed dozens of stadiums, sports halls, youth centers, and sporting facilities in a systematic attack on Palestinian sport and on the Palestinian people’s right to life and liberation. The occupation also continues to imprison hundreds of Palestinian athletes in its prisons and detention centers, while denying thousands of athletes the right to travel and participate in regional and international sporting competitions and events.
The continued membership of “Israel” in international sporting institutions constitutes a major moral and political scandal, exposing the hypocrisy and double standards that govern these institutions, which proclaim the values of justice and equality while providing cover for a state that commits war crimes, genocide, and the systematic destruction of Palestinian society.
We call upon World Cup viewers and football supporters to raise Palestinian flags, organize solidarity actions, launch chants and display banners opposing genocide, and demand the exclusion of the Zionist entity from all sporting, cultural, and international forums, affirming that free peoples will not remain silent in the face of the crimes committed against Palestine and the peoples of the region.
The struggle for Palestine is not merely a Palestinian issue, but a human, moral, and international cause, and that sports fans around the world possess the ability to send a clear message to their governments and sporting institutions: that a state built on occupation, racism, and genocide has no place among the free peoples of the world and no place in international sporting arenas.
source: Masar Badil