• Israel’s attempts at erasing Palestinian identity have been relentless, manifesting as unimaginable human cost, profound collective trauma, mass displacement, destruction of infrastructure and the devastation of cultural and academic heritage

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Rebecca O’Keeffe is an author, activist, and researcher. She is a former international basketball player and member of Irish Sport for Palestine.

ISTANBUL

On Aug. 19, Palestinian national basketball player Mohammed Shaalan was reportedly gunned down in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces while seeking aid for his family, including a daughter suffering from kidney failure. He is the latest of tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed, including well over a thousand seeking aid and hundreds of athletes slaughtered by Israel in the course of a genocidal campaign that has now extended nearly to the end of a full two years. Around the world we hear the question again and again: what can we do about Gaza? There is an answer: organize athletic boycotts. This is not a hypothetical. As organizers of athletic boycott campaigns in both Ireland and Canada, we write in the spirit of solidarity, as both athletes and academics.

Another of the aid seekers killed recently by Israel was 43-year-old Gazan soccer legend Suleiman Obeid, nicknamed the “Palestinian Pele,” who was reportedly killed by “armaments dropped by an Israeli quadcopter.”

Tragically, Obeid’s death was hardly an exception when it comes to athletes who have been killed by Israel in the course of the genocide. In fact, the practice has been so prevalent as to have earned its own term in a forthcoming article in the Sociology of Sport Journal: athleticide. Athleticide refers to the systematic killing of athletes as part of a larger genocidal campaign that serves to erase this vital manifestation of cultural identity from existence.

Israel’s attempts at erasing Palestinian life and identity have been relentless, manifesting as unimaginable human cost, profound collective trauma, mass displacement, destruction of infrastructure and the devastation of cultural and academic heritage. The realm of sports has not been spared either, with the decimation of athletic facilities; stadia being converted into mass detention centers; the continued massacres of Palestinian athletes -- the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has reported the deaths of 808 athletes since Oct. 7, 2023, nearly half that number children -- and coaches; and the weaponization of Zionist propaganda in international sporting events (sports washing). Even long before the current genocide, Palestinians faced systematic attacks on their sports clubs; targeted abuse and restricted movement of athletes; and repeated devastation of infrastructure -- all of which have historically denied Palestinian athletes a level playing field.

Parallels to apartheid South Africa

In light of these ongoing atrocities, and in an effort to leverage our own cultural capital in the spaces we circulate within, we have both recently been involved in sporting boycott campaigns against Israel designed to pressure the regime to back off on its genocidal project. In doing so, we explicitly follow the lead of activists who worked to isolate South Africa from international sport and, in doing so, ultimately led to the collapse of apartheid–a system acclaimed author Ta-Nahesi Coates has directly compared to Israel.

Irish sportspeople, through Irish Sport for Palestine, have been speaking out and taking action. In a 2023 open letter signed by over 300 prominent Irish athletes, we showed solidarity to Palestinians, called for a suspension of Israel from all international sporting events, and asked for investigations into violations of sporting charters. We also demanded a permanent ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and an end to the occupation. Given our own historical use of indigenous sport as an anti-imperial tool, we believe it is possible – through sport – to not only resist the forces of colonialism, but also demand recognition, equality, and respect.

Due to Rebecca’s involvement in basketball, including as a former international player, a demand to remove Israel from competition went out in November 2023 when Ireland was slated to play Israel in the Eurobasket Qualifiers. This was followed by appeals to Basketball Ireland to boycott the fixture, and lastly, a call to athletes to boycott. The match was postponed to February 2024 due to security concerns but civil society pressure during this time only intensified, especially as Basketball Ireland dismissed calls for a boycott and cited possible sanctions as the main reason. Basketball Ireland’s CEO didn’t believe a boycott would make “a blind bit of difference” and would only destroy the Irish women’s international game for the next decade.

While calls for an outright boycott ultimately went unheeded (except for five courageous players), the absence of pregame rituals by Ireland brought massive awareness and sparked an international conversation about the continued participation of a genocidal regime in sporting competitions. It also created more scrutiny for subsequent fixtures of which there were two: a 3x3 World Series match and the return Eurobasket fixture. Despite another push from civil society, including 70,000 letters of protest sent to governing bodies, the return fixture went ahead again in the neutral venue of Latvia behind closed doors, despite the fact that Latvia is a party to the Convention Against Genocide in Sport, and as such has a duty to hold Israel accountable.

In what might seem like a heavy-handed twist of fate, Ireland’s senior women have once again been drawn in the same group as Israel in the Eurobasket 2027 Qualifiers, alongside Bosnia and Herzegovina and Luxembourg. It cannot be emphasized enough that this would not be happening if FIBA had simply done its duty by removing Israel from the competition in the first instance. However, in the absence of such leadership, national federations (and governments) need to step up and act.

Following the lead of Irish Sport for Palestine, Canadians have engaged in our own campaign against the impending Davis Cup tennis match between Israel and Canada to be played in Halifax in September. Among a number of ongoing actions, Nathan was involved in organizing a letter addressed to Tennis Canada and Sport Canada demanding that those organizations “refuse to legitimize this contest and to forbid Canadian athletes to compete against Israeli athletes at the Davis Cup and all other international events.”

That letter has been signed, as of now, by 451 Canadian or Canada-based athletes, athletic officials, public intellectuals, scholars, and sports journalists, including Olympic silver medalist runner and national sporting hero Moh Ahmed, former Olympic beach volleyball coach Hernan Humana, former women’s national soccer team player and member of the Canadian sports hall of fame Andrea Neil, former Olympian biathlete Megan Bankes, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, and three former UN Special Rapporteurs. Ahmed added, in a stunning poem written in response to the CIJA’s claim that signatories are just a “small mob of extremists,” “Is it extreme/ to call out stolen lands,/ perpetual statelessness,/ a people occupied and erased/for more than seven decades?...No./ What’s extreme is not the outcry./ What’s extreme is the silence./ The indifference./ The normalization of suffering.”

The simple fact is that Ahmed’s demands carry more weight than nearly every legal scholar combined. That’s the potential power of an athletic boycott.

The power of the athlete's voice

Likewise, although FIFA and UEFA have refused to acknowledge the atrocities committed by Israel, including the international campaign to “show Israel the red card,” it took just a few words on social media from football legend Mo Salah to compel a response from UEFA after the murder of Suleiman Obeid. After Salah quoted a vaguely-written UEFA post about Obeid’s death with the questions, "Can you tell us how he died, where, and why,” UEFA immediately responded by unfurling a banner reading “Stop killing children, Stop killing civilians,” before its Super Cup final. Well obviously ineffectual compared to actually banning Israel and Israeli clubs from competition–a decision that falls well within UEFA’s purview–this absurd spectacle did speak to the potential power of athletic boycott.

Yet, the day after that spectacle, UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said in an interview that "the issue of Israel's (non-)participation in UEFA competitions is a legitimate question…It is very difficult for me to comment on what could happen in the future… I think the time has come when we have to stop pretending that we are a sports organization that lives on another planet." It is notable that in its recent reporting on the killing of Suleiman Obeid, The Athletic highlighted that “more than 50 athletes, including high-profile footballers, are planning to take a stand on the issue." This is precisely what is needed.

Because taking a stand requires more of athletes than oblique social media posts. It means making a real material stand against Israel such that it comes to feel the international ostracism that South Africa once did and Russia does today. Athletes like Jordan’s Abdellah Shelbayh, who withdrew from a tournament rather than face an Israeli opponent, or Jordan’s U19 basketball team, who refused to play a World Cup match against Israel, are setting such an example, even if it comes at personal professional cost.

It is up to fans and others in the sporting community to give athletes the support and solidarity they need to bravely stand up to genocide. We need to organize. It is the collective responsibility of everyone who cares about athletics to work together to ban Israel from global sport before it is too late—if it isn’t already.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.