NEW YORK—The World Jewish Congress welcomed the decision of the Zurich-based International Football Federation (FIFA) to suspend Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Chairman Jibril Rajoub for inciting against the Argentine national team and player Lionel Messi ahead of a scheduled friendly match between Israel and Argentina in June.
FIFA’s disciplinary committee sanctioned Rajou after determining that he had breached article 53 (inciting hatred and violence) of the organisation’s disciplinary code.
He has been given a 12-month match ban and handed a fine of 20,000 Swiss Francs, “following media statements he gave calling on football fans to target the Argentinian Football Association and burn jerseys and pictures of Lionel Messi.”
Argentina had been due to play a friendly match against Israel in Jerusalem on June 9, just prior to the World Cup. The match was subsequently cancelled.
“The 12 month suspension imposed on Mr. Rajoub entails a ban on taking part in any future match or competition taking place in the given period,” FIFA said.
Attempting to pre-empt Rajoub’s regular practice of denouncing his enemies to the press, FIFA underlined that the ban extended to “media activities at stadiums or in their vicinity on match days.”
Following the incident in June, WJC President Ronald S. Lauder sent a letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, urging the organization to take punitive measures, calling the subsequent cancellation of the match “a win for the champions of international divisiveness.”
In response to the decision on Friday, WJC CEO Robert Singer said: ““FIFA has sent a strong message to the Palestinian Football Association and its supporters that incitement to terror has no place in our society, on or off the football field. Over the years, the PFA has repeatedly demonized Israel, politicized sports, and encouraged violence, under the guidance of its chairman, Jibril Rajoub. I hope that Mr. Rajoub’s suspension will make it clear that sport is meant to bring people together regardless of politics, race, or religion. We must not let adherence of terror prevail.”
Jibril Rajoub is an ex-terrorist released in a 1985 prisoner exchange between Israel and a terrorist Palestinian faction. He served as a national security adviser to the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and was the head of the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank from 1994 until 2002.
Rajoub has long used his sporting affiliations to promote a boycott of Israeli athletes and encourage terror against Israel. In 2014, he violated the regulations of the International Olympic Committee, of which Israel is a member, by describing “normalization in sports with the Zionist enemy” as a “crime against humanity.” The following year, he pursued a failed campaign to expel Israel from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.
A more recent effort to persuade FIFA to sanction six Israeli clubs based in the West Bank similarly failed after opposition from European soccer associations, causing Rajoub to opine that Palestinian soccer players were being made “scapegoats for what some European countries did against the Jews last century” — a reference to the Holocaust.