JNS
The complaint against senior Palestinian Authority official Jabril Rajoub comes as the sports body weighs a Palestinian bid he initiated to have Israel suspended from international soccer over Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
Two prominent Israeli research institutes have lodged an official complaint with the world soccer body FIFA against the head of the Palestinian Football Association for using sports to promote terrorism and violence in violation of the organization’s regulations.
The complaint against senior Palestinian Authority official Jabril Rajoub comes as the sports body weighs a Palestinian bid he initiated to have Israel suspended from international soccer over Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
“In breach of FIFA’s Statue, Disciplinary Codes and Code of Ethics, Rajoub is using football and FIFA to promote purely political goals, espouses racist views against Jews, Israelis and Israel, promotes terror and violence and erases Israel’s very existence,” reads the Oct. 6 letter by the heads of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and Palestinian Media Watch.
The 27-page complaint states that the actions taken by Rajoub, including praising the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, “are among the most egregious offenses” according to the world soccer body’s laws, and notes that Rajoub was previously convicted by the organization in 2018 for “inciting hatred to violence” for which he was sentenced to a 12-month match suspension and given a monetary fine.
In August, Rajoub, secretary-general of the Fatah Central Committee, said in a interview with Lebanon's Mayadeen TV that former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a “pragmatic, patriotic, and realistic man” and that Israel was attempting to demonize him.
“I have personally known the brother and leader Abu Ibrahim [Sinwar] to be a pragmatic, patriotic and realistic man with whom it is possible to strike a [Fatah-Hamas] deal of national compromise. For him, this has been a matter of principle throughout the years when we had direct friction with them,” said Rajoub.
Earlier this month, Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed Sinwar in a firefight in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Last year, Rajoub said that Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw another 250 abducted to Gaza was "heroic," and carried out “in the context of the defensive war our people are waging.”
Rajoub also sponsored a sporting event named after a Palestinian terrorist who participated in a notorious 1978 massacre which killed more than three dozen Israelis, one-third of them children.
There has been no response to the letter from the sports body to date.
“The decades-long efforts by the P.A. to exploit sports as a tool of war in an attempt to dehumanize and delegitimize the Jewish state is intolerable,” JCFA President Dan Diker told JNS on Thursday. “Officials like Jabril Rajoub who have been trading in this type of weaponization of sports as political warfare must face consequences for such behavior,” he added.
“It is unthinkable that FIFA will allow an open terror supporter to play a role in FIFA sports,” added PMW Director Itamar Marcus. “If FIFA does not remove him it is sending a message to every Palestinian that murdering Israelis is seen as legitimate. On the other hand, FIFA has an opportunity to send a message to all Palestinians that terror and sports don’t mix.”
Earlier, the Washington, D.C.-based B’nai Brith last month pushed back against efforts to sanction Israeli soccer, and urged FIFA to reject any such sanction against the Israeli soccer team.
The international Jewish organization had written to the heads of the world soccer body, calling on them “to use your good and high office to thwart any sanction against the [Israel Football Association] based on Israel’s just war of defense against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has also threatened to ban the head of the Palestinian soccer association, who initiated the move, from traveling abroad.
“Jibril Rajoub, a terrorist in a suit who openly supported Hamas’s crimes, is working around the clock to get Israel removed from the international soccer association,” tweeted Katz, tagging FIFA on the post.
“We will work to thwart his plans, and if he doesn’t stop—we will imprison him in the Muqata’a [P.A. presidential compound in Ramallah], where he will be left to play Stanga by himself between the walls,” added Katz, referring to a soccer-like game popular with Israeli children.
