Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar attends a ceremony for the Israeli Olympic delegation and the Paralympic delegation competing at the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, June 19, 2024. (Photo: Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90)
Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar has urged the international soccer association FIFA to dismiss Palestinian Football Association Chair Jibril Rajoub due to his praise of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and his promoting terrorism against Israel.
Rajoub is also a senior member of the Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA) under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.
“Rajoub’s statements are an insult to the values international sports aim to uphold. There’s no room in it for individuals who promote terror or violence within sporting institutions,” Zohar wrote in his letter to the FIFA head Gianni Infantino.
“His presence in senior sports roles sends a dangerous signal that sports platforms can be exploited for political purposes and the promotion of hatred and violence,” the Israeli minister continued.
Rajoub has a history of hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people. In November 2023, just one month after Hamas terrorists stormed the Gaza border into Israel, killing 1,200, he justified the atrocities committed against Israeli men, women, and children of all ages, describing them as part of “the defensive war our people are waging.”
The senior PA official also argued that the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians was a response to the Jewish state’s “aggression on all the Palestinian lands.”
He stated that the Hamas terror group “thwarted the goal of the Israeli right to integrate Israel into the region without resolving the Palestinian issue, based on the principle of peace in exchange for peace,” referring to the historic Abraham Accords in 2020, when Israel normalized its relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Rajoub has also repeatedly called for an international boycott of the Israeli soccer team.
In August 2024, Rajoub unsuccessfully urged FIFA to ban the Israel Football Association (IFA), accusing the State of Israel of violating international law and committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“FIFA cannot afford to remain indifferent to these violations or to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, just as it did not remain indifferent to numerous precedents,” Rajoub said.
The head of the Israel Football Association, Moshe Zuares rejected Rajoub’s accusations, which he described as a “cynical, political and hostile attempt by the Palestinian Association to harm Israeli football.”
“Make no mistake, the IFA never violated rules set by FIFA and UEFA and will never do so in the future,” Zuares stated.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino strongly condemned the Hamas attack and called for peace.
“Like everyone, I was extremely, extremely shocked by what happened on Oct. 7 in Israel,” Infantino stated, adding “And like anyone else, I was extremely, extremely shocked, and am extremely shocked at what’s happening in Gaza.”
“I pray for all those people who suffer the unimaginable … and I want, like all of you, just one thing: peace,” the FIFA head concluded.
Sporting events involving Israeli athletes have increasingly been marred by incidents of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.
Last November, at least 10 Israeli soccer fans were injured in Amsterdam when radical Muslim gangs carried out what many observers described as an antisemitic pogrom.
