In an act of breathtaking bravura, Moroccan right-back Achraf Hakimi shaped as though he was going to thump his penalty into the bottom corner of the net and, as Spain’s goalkeeper dove out of the way, sent a mockingly gentle chip down the goal’s centre.
With that, Morocco had achieved the greatest result in their history, beating Spain — the overwhelming favourites and, all the sweeter, a former colonial power — and progressing to the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup, the first Arab nation to get that far in the competition’s history.
It was a joyous, unrepeatable moment, the kind that can only happen at the World Cup. And to mark it, the team clustered around the flag of Palestine.
There has been a great deal of discussion of protest leading up to and during the Qatar World Cup. Iran’s team declined to sing its own national anthem in response to the repression of women in its home country. A handful of European teams announced they would give their captains rainbow armbands in support of LGBTIQA+ rights in a country that imprisons people for their gender expression or having same-sex relations.
Those teams backed down when threatened with sanctions on the pitch, although England has continued the anti-discrimination gesture of “taking a knee” before matches, and Germany pointedly covered their mouths in the team photo before their first game.
Elsewhere, Senegal’s Ismaïla Sarr celebrated his goal against Ecuador by covering his eyes and pointing an imaginary gun to his head, apparently a comment on international silence on atrocities afflicting Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But the most persistent and visible subject of protest has been Palestine — certainly compared to any other major sporting event. Tunisian fans raised a huge “Free Palestine” flag during their game against Australia. An England supporter’s interview with an Israeli journalist went viral after his team beat Senegal 3-0 and he exclaimed: “It’s coming home! But more importantly, free Palestine!”
Professor Fethi Mansouri, Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, said the resistance was partly a question of demographics: this is the first World Cup held in the Middle East, and Doha has a huge population of expats from around the Muslim world — North Africa, the Levant Arab countries — for whom Palestine is a major political issue.
“The immediate reason is simply situational,” agreed Challis Chair of International Law at Sydney University and UN adviser professor Ben Saul.
“Israeli reporters rarely encounter Arabs outside Israel, but the World Cup has enabled greater interaction, and provided a visible global platform for Arab protests.”
The build-up to the tournament was marked by several controversies — apart from the state of LGBTIQA+ issues in Qatar, there are the horrific conditions in which the stadiums were built, resulting in allegedly thousands of deaths of migrant labourers.
Some, including FIFA president Gianni Infantino, accused European media of “hypocrisy” over its almost universally bad coverage. Indeed, there are no major calls to boycott the Australia portion of next year’s women’s tournament, or the next men’s World Cup held in Canada, the US and Mexico, none of whom have spotless human rights records.
“European nations are in no position to lecture on workers’ rights, given the great barriers they’ve put up for people fleeing persecution from those same regions or indeed seeking employment opportunities,” Mansouri told Crikey.
“That is not to say the UAE or Qatar don’t need to improve migrant working conditions, they absolutely should, but there are many people from Bangladesh, or Pakistan or North Africa working in Qatar who would love to work in Europe instead, but are completely blocked and denied such opportunities.”
Saul said this feeling of western double standards is also aggravated by the “textbook enforcement of international law” that met “Russia’s annexation and occupation of Ukraine”.
“In contrast, the US and some western allies run a protection racket for Israel — its annexation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, 55-year occupation of Palestine, illegal settlements, war crimes and possible apartheid — including by opposing any efforts at international accountability or recognition of Palestinian statehood,” Saul said.
This comes following a jump to the religious right at government level in Israel, as well as the Abraham Accords “normalising” relations between Israel and regimes in some Arab states. Saul and Mansouri said this shows the disconnect between average citizens in many Arab states and their leadership.
“These acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people show that the Arab masses, even if their oppressive regimes have ‘normalised’ their relationship with Israel, as is the case with Morocco,” Mansouri said. “They are saying ‘we very much reject this normalisation and want to show our solidarity with Palestine’.”
There are Palestinians being killed and beaten up by Israeli Defence Forces and settlers nearly every day and extensively documented by witness video but only appears to be seen on sources like Twitter and Telegram. As is as well the continued unrelenting violent dispossession of Palestinian by settlers lands and bulldozing of Palestinian homes, orchards and even schools with children still in them. Yet all of these outrages get minimal token reporting on MSM. If a fraction of these outrages were committed in China they would be front page headlines for weeks.
Excellent report by Charlie Lewis. With due respect to Professor Ben Saul’s eminence and expertise, re his mention of “possible apartheid” in his list of appalling Israeli crimes, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and Yesh Din have unequivocally described the appalling Israeli maltreatment of Occupied Palestinians as “apartheid”. Further, anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish South African heroes in the fight against apartheid, notably Ronnie Kasrils and Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, have described the egregious Israeli race-based discriminatory system as worse than apartheid. Indeed Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of South African apartheid, stated: “Israel is an apartheid state”. For numerous such expert opinions on the obscene Israeli apartheid that violates the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid see “Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ .
Thanks Charlie. I’m not sure if you are aware of this Israeli organization so I will supply the link. B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (btselem.org)
Its been great to see so many Asian, African and Arab fans there, and fewer of the Euros and Brits. Has helped make it more enjoyable for everyone I’m told, as has the difficulty and expense of getting plastered! Qatar’s location and airline hub status has helped the influx as has its apparently liberal visa rules. Most of the criticism of the hosts is justified but there are also a few pluses.
Hard to think of a win so widely and joyously celebrated as Morocco’s.
Good on Morocco. The various Zionist lobbies will be after you though Charlie. There are few worse inequities in the attitude of the west than that which outsourced the cost of the guilty conscience of Europe to the Palestinians. The treatment of these peoples by the colonists of Israel is surely the same mindset that led to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. The self righteous assurance. The US has backed all manner of scumbag governments in the Middle East, leading to calamity in Iran and then Iraq. It has no status as any kind of honest broker and the Netanyahu government so beloved of Trump and his in-laws was and will beanother example of the scumbag kind.