How the Israel-Hamas war is splitting professional sport

As soccer player Youcef Atal was being suspended from his French club for sharing a social media video of a Palestinian preacher, his home nation of Algeria was postponing all of its domestic matches as a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

From one country, support, from another, condemnation.

OGC Nice’s Youcef Atal in action in 2022.Credit: AP

This split in responses reveals the wider challenge for sporting codes as fans, players and governing bodies try to navigate the complex and emotive conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Steve Georgakis, a leading researcher on the history and sociology of sport at the University of Sydney, said the era of athlete activism had “come to a head” because with the war in Gaza, there was no dominant support for one side or the other.

“That’s what you have now with what’s going on in Gaza. Officially, most of the Western countries that have all the commercialised sports support Israel. But there are a number of players, in soccer in particular, who are pro-Palestine,” he said.

Sport has become increasingly intertwined with social and political causes in recent years.

English and Romanian players take a knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement before a friendly match in 2020.Credit: AP

Taking a knee before NFL matches became widespread in a mark of solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement, leagues terminated Russian sponsorship deals and athletes refused to compete against Russian sides following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, while national soccer teams including Australia’s Socceroos condemned Qatar’s human rights record ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

But now, athletes speaking out about the Gaza conflict are navigating a social media minefield. Basketball legend LeBron James was accused of ignoring Palestinians in his statement. WNBA player Natasha Cloud said she would lose sponsorship deals over her pro-Palestinian tweets.

English cricketer Moeen Ali had to delete the Palestinian flag from an image he posted of civil rights activist Malcolm X.

Atal, a 27-year-old Algerian, was issued a seven-match suspension from his French team OGC Nice, and was met with harsh criticism after he shared a video of an Islamic preacher calling for action against Jews. He deleted the post and issued an apology, amid a preliminary investigation for terrorism charges.

While his suspension was being issued, his home country’s soccer league made its own announcement. The league, run by the Algerian Football Association, would be postponing all of its matches in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The vice president of France’s conservative Republican Party called for last year’s Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema to be stripped of his French citizenship after he spoke out about the conflict.

Benzema wrote on social media: “All our prayers are for the people of Gaza who once again fell victim to this unjust bombing, which did not spare women or children.”

The issue has played out in Australia, too. Last week, AFL representatives called the three-time premiership player Bachar Houli to take down a pro-Palestinian video he posted which the president of Maccabi, Australia’s largest Jewish grassroots sporting organisation, described as an “unnecessary promotion of divisiveness”.

While Houli no longer plays in the AFL, he is involved with Richmond through his foundation, which provides opportunities for young Muslims through sport. League boss Andrew Dillon sits on the foundation board.

The Houli Foundation and Maccabi are both involved in the Jolson-Houli Unity Cup, an annual AFL match between Victorian Jewish and Muslim teenagers.

The cup has been held at the MCG since 2019. While it is usually played in September, it was postponed this year because it fell on Sukkot, the seven-day Jewish holiday. A new date for the game has not been set, as the teams are still working through their schedules.

Maccabi president Jeff Sher said organising a new date was not something Maccabi were responsible for, but criticised Houli’s decision to post about the conflict.

A demonstration to show solidarity with Israel in late October.Credit: Edwina Pickles

“To be involved with a partner such as the Houli Foundation … where the spirit of engagement has been one of respect and tolerance, it has been difficult to understand why in the history of doing [that] there has been this unnecessary promotion of divisiveness,” Sher said.

The AFL, Richmond and the MCG declined to comment on the matter. The Houli Foundation and Houli did not respond when contacted.

In the NRL, Bulldogs star Josh Addo-Carr apologised for uploading an Instagram post linking the conflict in the Middle East with Indigenous land rights in Australia. The Canterbury winger uploaded a photo of the Palestinian and Aboriginal flags with the caption “One struggle, one fight”.

“As a proud First Nations man, I saw a message of support against displacement and land rights, and I shared this without full consideration to, or understanding of, the current events happening overseas,” he said in a statement.

Bulldogs winger Josh Addo-Carr uploaded a post to his instagram story with the Palestinian flag.Credit: Getty/Instagram

“I recognise that this is a mistake. As soon as it was brought to my attention, I deleted my post and felt remorse.

“Having gone away and looked at what is happening overseas, it is a complex situation. There are no winners in war and where there is loss of life. The message I thought I was sharing, was a message of respect for all people.”

Georgakis said it was harder now for sport to “sit above the politics” because of globalisation and the increasing acceptance of athlete activism.

“We also want our sporting codes to be advocates for social justice and inclusion. But the problem is – as we’ve seen in the last two or three weeks – what happens when there is no real unanimous, dominant belief,” Georgakis said.

It’s a precarious topic that even academics are hesitant to speak about. While not all experts would agree with Georgakis’ viewpoint, more than a dozen academics across Australia’s major universities declined interview requests for this article.

Other soccer federations had different reactions to the Algerian league. European soccer’s governing body called for players to wear black armbands and hold a minute silence for the lives lost in the conflict. The Premier League in England banned Israeli and Palestinian flags from stadiums.

But neutral responses to avoid taking a side have also been met with resistance. The UK government told its national soccer federation that it needed to do “much more” to show support for Israeli victims after it refused light a steel arch above Wembley Stadium in the colours of the Israeli flag.

And the Qatar-owned beIN Media Group – the Middle East and North Africa’s leading soccer broadcaster – removed any mention of the victims of the Hamas attacks from its match broadcasts.

The Scottish soccer club Celtic’s supporters have defied a ban on Palestinian and Israeli flags. Credit: Getty

Scottish soccer club Celtic’s fan association, the Green Brigade, defied its club’s flag ban by unfurling Palestinian flags before their 2-2 draw against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League.

They doubled down against criticism from their own club by waving flags once more during the 4-1 win over the Edinburgh-based club Hearts. Celtic responded by banning around 200 Green Brigade members for the remainder of the season.

Last month, Socceroos coach Graham Arnold called on the government to help ensure his Australian side play their World Cup qualifier against the Palestine team at a safe, neutral venue on November 21.

“No doubt we’re going to need the government’s support in those type of decisions on where we’re playing Palestine and even Lebanon,” Arnold told reporters in London.

“Because of what is going on at the moment, it’s quite scary.

“We’re obviously not on top of everything that is going on in the security side of things in the Middle East, no doubt the government is more into that than we are – so give us some help so the decision is safe.“

The Olympics, which strives to insulate itself from global politics, addressed the conflict during an International Olympic Committee meeting in Mumbai.

Chairman of the 2024 Los Angeles Olympics, Casey Wasserman, who is Jewish, said in his opening remarks to the committee: “Unfortunately, the Olympics are not immune to the world we live in.” Wasserman pointed to the 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Games.

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas are posted on a wall in Tel Aviv.Credit: Getty

“I unequivocally stand in solidarity with Israel, but let me be clear - I also stand with the innocent civilians in Gaza who did not choose this war.”

Football Australia and the NRL were also contacted for comment.

With London Telegraph and Reuters

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More coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict

• Cascading violence: Tremors from the Hamas attacks and Israel’s response have reached far beyond the border. But what would all-out war in the Middle East look like?
• The human cost: Hamas’ massacre in Israel has traumatised - and hardened - survivors. And in Gaza, neighbourhoods have become ghost cities.
• “Hamas metro”: Inside the labyrinthine network of underground tunnels, which the Palestinian militant group has commanded beneath war-ravaged Gaza for 16 years. The covert corridors have long provided essential channels for the movement of weapons and armed combatants.
• What is Hezbollah?: As fears of the conflict expanding beyond Israel and Hamas steadily rise, all eyes are on the militant group and political party that controls southern Lebanon and has been designated internationally as a terrorist group. How did it form and what does Iran have to do with it?