Rajoub is gaining huge success thanks to the actual existence of the discussion
Photo: AFP
Rajoub is riding the right horse
Op-ed: The Palestinian Football Association chairman is taking advantage of the automatic anti-Israel majority at international institutions to position himself as a fighter against racism; there is no greater absurdity, but this absurdity is winning.
When Jibril Rajoub, the chairman of the Palestinian Football Association, encourages and advances and glorifies Palestinian terror with one hand, he is committing a crawling terror attack with his other hand. This is the meaning of his appeal to suspend Israel from FIFA,
the international governing body of association football.
We should remember that at the international institutions there is an automatic majority for any anti-Israel proposal – the bloc of Islamic states and Third World countries, most of which are dark countries which coarsely oppress human rights and women, automatically stands by any Palestinian proposal. This is the situation at the United Nations General Assembly, and at the UN Human Rights Council. Rajoub is taking advantage of this situation and positioning himself as a fighter against racism. There is no greater absurdity. But this absurdity is winning.
Since South Africa, not a single country has been suspended from FIFA: Not Iran, which brutally oppresses human rights; not Turkey, which puts journalists in jail; and not Sudan, which committed genocide against its black residents in Darfur. There is also no chance that it will happen. Rajoub, who refers to the Jews as the "sons of Satan," is gaining huge success thanks to the actual existence of this discussion.
Fight for Soccer
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Jibril Rajoub with FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Riding the horse of hatred and incitement against Israel (Photo: AFP)
Until today, admittedly, the boycott campaign against Israel, in all of its forms, has failed to produce any successes which affected the Israeli economy. But we should not discount the campaign Rajoub is riding on now. Because this campaign is scoring victories in the global public opinion. It is gaining victories in many campuses in the United States. There are even articles in its favor in the world's leading newspapers.
The honey trap of "a non-violent struggle against the Israeli occupation" is gaining achievements, although the campaign's leaders are a group of sophisticated and despicable people with funding flowing in from Qatar, and their declared ambition is to destroy the State of Israel. They are the propaganda wing of Hamas and Fatah. And it's working.
If we think that Rajoub's failure in FIFA is guaranteed, we should stop being so indifferent – because it's not just the bloc of dark countries which votes against Israel. The World Health Organization (WHO) held a discussion a week ago. Only one country was explicitly condemned there – Israel. The reason: Israel's violation of the health rights of Syrians in the Golan. The international organization doesn’t care about the massacre of Sunnis, Shiites and Alawites in Syria. Nor is it interested in the fact that Israel cares for injured Syrians, or that Israel set up the biggest hospital in Nepal. The majority is only interested in the condemnation. The absurd reaches new heights when the gap between today's anti-Israel sentiments and the past's anti-Semitism is erased.
So Rajoub is riding the right horse – the horse of hatred and incitement against Israel. He knows that even Israel's friends in the WHO, including Germany and France and the Czech Republic, voted with the dark majority. So who knows, perhaps the camp of darkness and hatred will succeed in FIFA as well. Instead of the free, enlightened world influencing the dark world, the dark world is taking over the world which should have been free and enlightened.
That same Rajoub said that Israel was a foreign element threatening humanity. That's exactly what they said about the Jews in Europe 70 years ago. But who remembers? And that tune is returning.
