All the more reason to push back, against the irrational, Jew hating jackasses around the world who have to be confronted at every level, at every chance and opportunity, with fact and logic an consistently.
Could Israel Get Booted Out of Soccer?
For the past few years, Palestinians have been trying to give a red card to Israel, removing it from the world’s most popular sport. A look inside their game plan—and how it decreases the chances for peace.
On May 29, a 79-year-old Swiss bureaucrat named Sepp Blatter will run for his fifth term as president of FIFA, the governing body of world soccer. Having led the organization that oversees the world’s most popular game since 1998—an organization that has long been accused of rampant corruption, retrograde sexism, and, in the case of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, enabling slavery—Blatter is a man who, like the sport he runs, brings out the passion in people.
“He may well be the most successful non-homicidal dictator of the past century,” said Marina Hyde of The Guardian. “Sepp Blatter saying ‘I stand by my work’ is like a puppy standing by the work it did after being left alone in the house for the first time,” said John Oliver of HBO.
But the people who actually participate in his elections have an entirely different, though no less passionate, view. To them, Blatter is akin to Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill—“Why is he different from these other men?” asked Osiris Guzman, the president of the Dominican Football Federation.
Guzman once served a 30-day suspension from FIFA over allegations of vote-buying connected to an election that determined that the best possible location for a month-long soccer tournament was a desert nation where temperatures frequently hit 120 degrees and homosexuality is punishable by death—not to worry, though,said Blatter, because gay soccer fans should just “refrain from any sexual activities.”
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One of FIFA’s only saving graces over the past few years has been that it has done a decent job at staying neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while successfully working to develop soccer in both countries: In the last two years, FIFA has invested $4.5 million in infrastructure and stadium upgrades in the West Bank, and selected Israel to host the Men’s Under-21 and Women’s Under-19 European Championships. Approving the Palestinian proposal would mean that, like a brilliant goal-scoring run called offside, it was all a lot of effort with nothing to show for it.
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“Until now we have not had nuclear weapons, but in the name of Allah, if we had nuclear weapons, we’d be using them,” the Palestinian soccer chief once said.
Five Gaza-based players were prevented from joining the Palestinian national team for an away match against Uzbekistan to qualify for the 2006 World Cup after a suicide bombing in Beersheba caused Israel to close the borders; the portion of the squad that was able to travel to the match did not have enough players to make substitutions.
