Campaign monsters FIFA’s Trump Peace Board links

Pressure group Football Against Fascism has issued a stinging response to FIFA’s stance on Gaza. The increasingly Trump-obsessive governing body has pledged $75m to football projects in Gaza.

Support for Palestinian football would be very welcome. As the Canary‘s Alaa Shamali wrote, Palestinian football stands as:

not just a sporting phenomenon, but an emotional human movement.

However, FIFA is partnering with the ludicrous Trump vanity project the ‘Board of Peace’. Football Against Fascism describes this as:

a colonialist and capitalist enterprise created to plunder Gaza of its natural resources.

It emphasises that Palestinians must be at the heart of rebuilding Gaza. It regards the FIFA collaboration as an attempt to ‘sportswash’ Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, given the difficulties and dangers for fans and teams travelling to the US under the Trump regime, Football Against Fascism is demanding that FIFA moves all World Cup matches out of the country.

Football Against Fascism is a campaign by the Stop Trump Coalition and The Three Hijabis.

Statement on FIFA, Trump and Gaza from Football Against Fascism

Football Against Fascism stands in solidarity with Palestinians, the national Palestinian football team, and all decent fans across the world outraged by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel’s turbo-charging of human-rights abuses in the occupied West Bank.

We are disgusted by FIFA’s shameful cozying up to Trump and its role on the ‘Board of Peace’.

Once again, FIFA, under the so-called leadership of Gianni Infantino, brings football, the global game we love, into disrepute by standing on the wrong side of international human rights, international law, and by weaponising football against a people trying to survive a genocide that has been aggressively fuelled by the US government and supported by its allies, including the U.K.

Gianni Infantino has announced FIFA will contribute $50m to Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, in an attempt to leverage the support of Trump. This move by Infantino and FIFA amounts to genocide denial.

This latest disgraceful announcement by Infantino follows Infantino awarding the ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ to Trump last year, emboldening Trump and providing him with a cloak of respectability he desperately desires.

Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is a colonialist and capitalist enterprise created to plunder Gaza of its natural resources, including significant gas reserves, and to further dehumanise Palestinians and subject them to further brutality and ethnic cleansing.

Palestinians, and only Palestinians, must determine their future and the future of a free and sovereign Palestine, governed by Palestinians.

Instead, Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, a rogue’s gallery of war criminals and billionaires ranging from Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair to Jared Kushner, Mark Rowan, and Yakir Gabay, continues with its grotesque spectacle of double speak and brazen colonialist extremism.

Most outrageously, Israel – the perpetrator of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people – is included in the ‘Board of Peace’.

Benjamin Netanyahu, charged with war crimes by the ICC, should face trial – not oversee and benefit from the paving of real estate over the mass graves of Palestinians he is responsible for creating.

Football Against Fascism supports the IOC’s investigation into Infantino, but it is already clear that FIFA must immediately withdraw from the ‘Board of Peace’, remove Infantino as its head and carry out root and branch reform to ensure FIFA is acting in service to global football and fans and not to corporate and political elites.

FIFA must ensure the Football World Cup is not instrumentalised to sports-wash genocide in Gaza and used as a propaganda event to sanitise the image of Trump’s regime of cruelty and war mongering.

FIFA must ensure the Football World Cup is safe for supporters and players alike to attend.

Given Trump’s actions enabling ICE to carry out violence, enforced disappearances and shooting dead protesters in the US, Football Against Fascism demands World Cup matches be moved outside of the United States.

Signed,
Football Against Fascism
The Three Hijabis
Stop Trump Coalition

Featured image via the Canary