German media: Orchestrated hostility toward Israel: Morocco is not in Palestine

Submitted by Otto G. (United States), Dec 28, 2022 at 14:55

FOOTBALL WORLD CUP 2022 QATAR

taz

COLUMN OCCIDENT

Sports

2022-12-10

COLUMN BY

MARTIN KRAUSS

Orchestrated hostility toward Israel: Morocco is not in Palestine

You just have to like World Cup outsiders Morocco – don't you? Adding an anti-Semitic touch to the joy makes things difficult.

Palestine plays along: Morocco's team after reaching the quarter-finals

How could we not be happy that Morocco has one of the eight best football teams in the world ! Finally a team that doesn't come from Europe or South America! In addition - and now follows an interpretation that is surprisingly seldom read at present - a North African team that has gradually chased one colonial power after the other off the football field: Belgium in the preliminary round, Spain in the round of 16; now another nation is waiting with Portugal, which owes its wealth largely to its colonial past. Next, France and the Netherlands could be decolonized in terms of football.

Instead of this, I think, obvious interpretation, the Moroccan success is overlaid with a lot of Palestine symbolism. The Moroccan team held up a Palestine flag after defeating Spain. Tunisian fans did something similar in the preliminary round. And some Qataris are now wearing a "pro-Palestine" armband in response to the Europeans' "One Love" armband, which they see as an impertinence.

At first, that seems childishly defiant: ugh, we have our protest too! From a political point of view, however, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is used here to assert an alleged Arab unity. As if fans from Maghreb countries were in the same boat as the Qatari ruling families! In order to prevent protests, which could not least come from Palestinian migrant workers in Qatar, ruling families from the emirate and other regimes are building a bugbear called "Palestine Solidarity". It is not without reason that Qatar has been financially supporting the terror that the Islamist Hamas is waging against Israel for years.

There is a historical precedent for the transparent pro-Palestine propaganda that so characterizes the World Cup. In 1963, a counter-Olympics were held in Jakarta. Ganefo called it "Games of the New Emerging Forces". What was supposed to look like a sympathetic rebellion from the then so-called Third World countries was the project of the Indonesian President Sukarno. It was explicitly directed against Israel's participation in world sport.

Anti-racism is still necessary, it can be expressed, for example, in joy at Moroccan soccer successes. But giving that joy an anti-Semitic touch is the twist that gangs like the Qatari dynasty want to use to secure their power.

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https://taz.de/Orchestrierte-Israel-Feindschaft/!5897026/

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