I’m not a great sports lover. Consider boxing cannot be considered a ‘sport’ by any sane, thinking individual; and certain rugby only receives the respect it doesn’t deserve because it was nurtured in a private school: institutions guaranteed to fuck up boys’ minds, before the physical ‘sport’ pummels their cerebral cortex. Beside which football is positively graceful – though heading of the ball, to me, is problematical.
Unusually, I and my partner watched both the quarter and semi-finals, disappointed that England, rightly resisting the world champion’s unprofessional taunting technique of deliberately fouling, did not make it through to the final, delighted when they triumphed in the play-off, both sides playing a clean professional game, and glad foul play led to Argentina losing.
But such is the importance of the sport that, for many, spirits were lifted by their team’s ability to get so far, while playing a clean, elegant game. And in sport, as in life and geopolitics, the behaviour of those at the top of their game can affect the behaviour of all of us. So, let’s hope, now we have a Prime Minister with, I hope, progressive ideas for genuine change, that hope and positivity will be on the rise. One apology I welcomed, before Andy Burnham’s term had begun, came in relation to Starmer’s too slow call for a ceasefire in Gaza; described by Jeremy Bowen on the Today programme, as a dystopian hellscape, where, since the alleged ‘ceasefire’ more than 1,100 people have been killed by the Israelis, some summarily executed.
My intention was to again write about the abandonment of the Palestinian people, but ‘the beautiful game’ touched lives across the world, whether shoulder to shoulder in pubs and parks or, like me, at home, settled on sofas, or, in the case of many Gazans, sitting by the rubble that was once their home. Anyone who does not feel the suffering of the Palestinian people has lost their humanity: so said, Hossan Hassan, the Egyptian team’s manager, before his side lost to Argentina. Early on, ahead of the opening Mexico city match, activists formed an image of the Palestinian flag in the street, the match, Mexico v South Africa, was attended by the head of the Palestinian Football Association – who was not permitted a visa to watch all matches in the US. While, amongst the rubbled devastation, Palestinians, those who play the game and those who wanted to watch it, gathered. Where on June 29th, a 32-year-old man, a goalkeeper who had played for several Gazan teams, was out looking for a cooking gas cylinder, when an Israeli tank opened fire, making him the 567th Palestinian footballer to die since October 2023. And in the Sabra district of Gaza City, just before that Argentina v Egypt match, an Israeli missile hit a taxi killing a 57-year-old aid worker, on his way to a screening of the game, part of a series of World Cup matches shown in Gaza, at the same time killing to small boys on their way home from playing football: Fari and Hamza were eight and ten years old respectively.
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It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game: a phrase associated with Henry Grantland Rice, an American sportswriter and poet of the early 20th century.
So, what has happened to geopolitical fair play? For more than a century no government has played fair with the Palestinian people. And the recent gutless Labour government did little to prevent Israel’s continual flouting of international laws and their blatant killing, starvation, its genocide, of a people surrounded by a murderous army and government. Members of which supply guns to illegal West Bank settlers, so they can do their killing for them. Meanwhile, as part of the genocide, innocent Palestinian men and boys, large numbers of medical staff, including many highly-trained doctors remain locked up without sentence or trial, to be beaten and abused. And still the world does not cut off all ties with the state of Israel. And he who could easily turn off the funding tap, the increasingly, scarily, trigger-happy Trump, does nothing.
Back home, our football-loving PM, Andy Burnham, appears to have what it takes to change things for the better. In that case Prime Minister, could you please kick off by de-proscribing Palestinian Action, and waving charges against the 2000 + protestors charged because of this appalling piece of legislation rushed through the Commons. Part of the Starmer ‘legacy’ Keir chose not to mention in his farewell speech.
I have, from time to time, written to my Labour MP on the subject of Palestinian rights. In a recent reply from his office, Clive Lewis said:
For too long this Labour Government[Starmer’s]has fallen short of its obligations under international law and of basic morality. Zero tolerance of antisemitism, Islamophobia and all racism, and an unshakeable commitment to human rights and international law, should never have been difficult things for a Labour government to stand for. Now let’s turn words into policy: settlement trade ban, full arms embargo.
Yes. Let’s do that. Let’s change things not just for this wealthy country of ours, but for those who need change far more than we do in this country. After all, the patient Palestinians have been waiting seventy-eight years!
Meanwhile, for those who are not quite as informed on as I am, or quite as angry, here are two essential books that might change that.
The Eyes of Gaza: a diary of resilience, a beautifully sad, page-turner, written with humour and great intelligence by the 22-year-old Plestia Alaqad, a recent English graduate, whose dreams of becoming a journalist are realised in the living nightmare of October 2023.
When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine, a personal and political account by Francesca Albanese (the Italian United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories), of bearing witness to the Palestinian struggle.
