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Follow Us on TwitterRed card for junior Euro league in Israel 7Jun13 June 7, 2013
Alternative Information Centre - 5 June 2013
Today is the opening of the 2013 UEFA Under 21 Championship in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya. The fact that a major international sport competition is being held in Israel is an outrage. A recent popular initiative in the French city of Albertville, ‘red card to Euro-league in Israel’, can serve as an example of how to mobilise social groups not generally involved in the BDS movement.
Today is the opening of the 2013 UEFA Under 21 Championship in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya. The fact that a major international sport competition is being held in Israel is an outrage: the colonial occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, together with the cruel siege on the Gaza Strip, make Israel a legitimate target for an international boycott. Just like the boycott of apartheid South Africa, Spain under the fascist dictatorship of Franco or Greece of the colonels’ junta.
More than a year ago, letters were sent to Michel Platini, chairman of FIFA, asking him to change the venue and to hold the competition in another country. FIFA didn’t agree. Throughout the world, many protest actions were then initiated to signify that Israel should be the target of a sports boycott, again like South Africa was during the apartheid regime
Several weeks ago I was invited by the French Palestine Solidarity Association (AFPS) to participate, as a BDS activist in Israel, in one of these protests against the junior euro league in Israel. The event was a football tournament in Albertville, a small town in southeastern France. On a sunny Sunday, fourteen teams competed under the slogan “red card to Euro-league in Israel”. The matches were played before an audience of hundreds of activists, but also of football fans who weren’t necessarily involved in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Not all the participants were following the contest, with some preferring to picnic or wander around the many information stands of the solidarity movements.
The teams took the contest very seriously and fought hard to win the cup; among those competing were the young firemen of Albertville, two women’s teams, groups from several disempowered neighbourhoodus as well as high school teams.
I was honored to present the trophy to the winners, as hundreds of participants shouted “red card to Euro League in Israel”, “boycott Israeli sports” and “long live Palestine”.
This successful and popular initiative in Albertville should serve as an example to other cities throughout the world on how to bring the BDS campaign to the grassroots and to involve in that campaign layers of the society not generally involved in political actions.
Thank You.
