World Cup: Egypt coach's Palestinian flag stunt shows FIFA's hypocrisy, anti-Zionism - opinion

“My heart and soul are with them,” Hassan said afterward regarding the “kind and honorable” Palestinians, to whom he dedicated the victory. “May Allah grant them victory. May Allah have mercy on their martyrs.”

Then, after Argentina eliminated Egypt on July 7, Hassan used his press conference to deliver a passionate soliloquy for four-and-a-half minutes.

“Today, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 of them were struck by a single missile and died, while we’re still here,” Hassan said. “It’s not hard to see that the children we see can’t even find food. They’re facing diseases and epidemics that can result from a lack of food, sleep, and basic necessities. So if I don’t feel compassion as a human being, then I have no reason to live – nor does any human being on the face of the earth who is unaware of what’s happening in Palestine.”

The hypocrisy of Hassan, the nation he represents, and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, is breathtaking. That hypocrisy inflames hostility toward Israel and its supporters.

Hassan speaks compassionately yet probably cares nothing about the victims of Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023 – victims who faced far worse than the Palestinians. Hassan revealed his true self when he yelled an obscenity and spat when confronted by an Israeli flag after Argentina’s victory.

Meanwhile, Egypt acts as Palestine’s ally yet views Palestinians as a domestic threat and economic burden. FIFA acts as an alleged apolitical body that disciplines political advocacy but grants the Palestinians and their supporters an exception.

Those attacks accelerated the development of stronger countermeasures. From 2013 to 2015, Egyptian authorities expelled about 3,200 families while destroying 3,255 buildings and hundreds of hectares of farmland.

“The Egyptian authorities provided residents with little or no warning of the evictions, no temporary housing, mostly inadequate compensation for their destroyed homes – none at all for their farmland – and no effective way to challenge their eviction, home demolition, or compensation,” Human Rights Watch stated in its report.

The steel-and-concrete wall now reaches 7 meters and includes electronic surveillance and a cleared buffer zone.

MEANWHILE, FIFA contradicts its own disciplinary code. Article 13 states that using a match “for demonstrations of a non-sporting nature” constitutes “offensive behavior” and violates “the principles of fair play.” Article 6 outlines punishments such as fines, suspensions, and banishment, but leaves enforcement to FIFA’s judicial bodies.

FIFA previously punished blatant politicking. In 2013, Croatian defender Josip Simunic received a 10-match suspension and missed the 2014 World Cup for using a salute associated with the pro-Nazi Ustaše regime during World War II. After that year’s tournament, Argentina’s soccer federation drew a fine because its players stood behind a banner proclaiming in Spanish that Britain’s Falkland Islands belonged to Argentina.

But when it comes to Palestine or Arab/Muslim sensibilities, FIFA exhibits far greater latitude.

“Rules only make sense if they are consistently applied,” Deutsche Welle’s Mark Meadows wrote at the time. “Whatever your view on the Middle East and the future of the Palestinian Territories, taking their flag onto a football pitch at the World Cup surely counts as a political statement.”

The Moroccans’ behavior reflected Qatar’s antagonism toward Israel.

“Israeli fans and reporters were met with a climate of hostility and anger that forced many of them to return to Israel,” wrote Hussein Aboubakar Mansour. “Those who have been following the story got a rare glimpse of the Israeli reality of living amidst a sea of absolute rejection and hostility.”

Arab fans yelled at Israeli reporters during interviews and said they did not belong in Qatar. “There is no Israel, only Palestine,” one shouted at Moav Vardi, KAN’s foreign affairs reporter. To avoid harassment, Israeli reporters said they came from other countries.

Local businesses also refused to serve Israelis. One restaurant owner not only called security to evict an Israeli diner but took the customer’s phone and deleted pictures of the food. Later, a taxi driver evicted the same patron from his cab in the middle of a street.

FIFA followed suit this year. Egypt’s federation has yet to be sanctioned for its coach’s advocacy. As it did in Qatar, FIFA allows the Palestinian flag while banning Iran’s lion-and-sun flag that flew before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Neither was the Israeli flag welcome. During the match between Iran and New Zealand on June 15, security warned a fan carrying an Israeli flag on his shoulders before confiscating it.

“They told me that the head of FIFA and the staff were actually pointing at me and singled me out in a stadium of 100,000 people,” the fan, named Rony, told Fox News. “Just two seats behind me, there were people with Palestinian flags. When I asked about them, they [security] said the head of FIFA didn’t care about that. They cared only about my flag, in particular. I thought we lived in America in 2026, not Nazi Germany in the 1930s.”

Some Palestinian activists want FIFA to expel Israel. On June 11, the World Cup’s first day, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, also called Masar Badil, issued a statement demanding that fans “raise the Palestinian flag and isolate the Zionist entity from international sport.”

Doha News showed activists covering a FIFA sign June 12 with a banner reading, “Kick Israel out of FIFA.” The video included support from social media.

If FIFA capitulates to such pressure, it will have sacrificed its credibility on the altar of appeasement.