Football has not canceled politics – Sport – Kommersant

The World Cup in Qatar is called one of the most politicized sporting events of recent times. This refers to the ongoing criticism in the Western media of the host country of the event, the clarification of relations between the national teams and the International Football Federation (FIFA), what symbols can be used during the games, as well as the transfer of internal problems of a country to the football field and the space around. Social networks are actively discussing the refusal of Arab fans to talk to Israeli journalists who are in Qatar for the first time. The passions around the Iranian team do not subside either, which either refuses to perform the country’s anthem in solidarity with the protesting compatriots, or changes its mind. And especially a lot of political sense is invested in the game between Iran and the United States, which is coming on Tuesday.

“In Qatar, I learned how much hatred there is in people on the street. How badly they want to wipe us off the face of the earth. How much they hate everything about Israel,” Israeli journalist Raz Shechnik tweeted on Saturday, choosing to share his emotions in Qatar instead of enjoying the sports holiday. His post literally blew up the Israeli and Arab segments of social networks, although even before that, during the week since the opening of the World Cup, videos appeared there about how Arab fans surround Israeli journalists while working at the tournament, shouting slogans in support of Palestine, or refusing to give interviews to Israelis . Added to this were stories that, despite a constructive approach on the part of the Qatari authorities, local residents do not want to deal with Israelis and they have to impersonate people from other countries.

Qatar does not have diplomatic contacts with Israel, although the countries maintain relations at the level of the security services and interact on issues related to solving the problems of the Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, where Doha is investing billions of dollars to maintain stability.

In agreement with FIFA, Qatar gave special permission for direct flights from Tel Aviv to Doha and the arrival of Israeli fans and diplomats in the country during the World Cup. In exchange, Israel allowed Palestinians to fly from Ben Gurion Airport to Qatar, which is not practiced at other times.

In addition, according to Israeli media reports, Doha warned Israel that it would reconsider its decision in the event of an outbreak of confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where a very tense situation remains.

The surprise of those Israeli journalists who have never written about politics before is based on the conviction of many citizens of the country that the recent normalization agreements with a number of Arab countries (“Abraham Accords”), including in the Persian Gulf region, automatically mean warming relations at all levels. The former and likely future Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long declared the thesis that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict no longer worries the majority of Arabs and peace can be achieved without concessions to the Palestinians. Reality turned out to be different. “I don’t know what expectations you came to Qatar with, but they probably didn’t match reality,” another Israeli journalist, Barak Ravid, who writes regularly on politics, told Raz Shechnik. He reminded his colleague that, despite the Abraham Accords, public opinion in the Arab world is still negative towards Israel. “On the one hand, this is the result of decades of anti-Israeli propaganda. On the other hand, this is the result of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the territories, which continues to generate hatred and hostility towards us in the Arab world,” he wrote.

At the same time, their Arab colleagues working in Israel entered into controversy with Israeli journalists complaining about the negative, posting videos on Twitter about the wave of hatred they have to face during live broadcasts and recordings of reports from the Israeli right. As a result, the discussion of the World Cup turned into a discussion about the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as the entire Middle East region as a whole.

And this is not the only political scandal at the World Cup.

A lot of noise was caused by the story of FIFA banning teams from wearing captain armbands with the inscription One Love, as representatives of a number of European teams planned to do.

These armbands were conceived as symbols of football support for the LGBT community and were used for the first time this year in the Nations League. FIFA’s decision is associated with the tough policy of the authorities of Qatar, as well as many other Muslim countries in relation to the LGBT community. In protest against the ban, the German national team made a symbolic gesture: the players unanimously closed their mouths with their palms before the match with Japan. The Minister of the Interior of Germany, Nancy Feser, who was present at the match, in contrast to the captain of the national team of her country, defiantly allowed herself to wear a bandage. At the same time, FIFA announced that it had settled the issue with the Qatari authorities on the admission of fans with LGBT flags to the stadiums. At the same time, the federation’s ban on fans wearing crusader costumes at the stadium remained in force, which could offend the feelings of Muslims.

And if in the Arab media these attempts by FIFA to look as politically correct as possible in Qatar remained practically unnoticed, in the Western media they only added fuel to the fire of the already unprecedented criticism of the hosts of the championship together with the International Football Federation. Even before the opening of the tournament, allegations of corruption and bribery by FIFA, as well as criticism of human rights violations, including foreign workers who worked on the construction of sports facilities, hit Doha. As the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said back in October, no World Cup host country has faced such unprecedented criticism. And this continues to this day, which is very upsetting for the Qataris, who hoped to change the stereotypes about their country and the Arab world as a whole among the guests of the championship. According to The New York Times correspondent present in Doha, his Qatari interlocutors complain about double standards: “Why, they ask, do Europeans buy natural gas in Qatar, if the country is so disgusting to them that they cannot watch football there? Why don’t some of the international figures who have spoken out against Qatar do the same for the UAE?”

FIFA President Gianni Infantino also spoke about criticism of Doha: “I think that for what we Europeans have done around the world over the past three thousand years, we should apologize for the next three thousand years before teaching other people morality “.

Particular attention at the World Cup is riveted to the Iranian team. There are many reasons for this: the tense relations of this country with the West and its neighbors in the region due to the active development of the nuclear program, and Tehran’s intervention in the Middle East conflicts, and the protests within Iran itself, which have not stopped for the eleventh week in a row and have been severely suppressed by the authorities, which is already led to the death of more than 400 people. Against this background, even before the start of the tournament, a wave of criticism from their own fans hit the national team, who were angry at the meeting of the players with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi before leaving for Doha. Protesters on the streets of Iran began to set fire to banners with images of the national team. And this despite the fact that the players made statements in support of the demonstrators, and before the first match with England, as a sign of solidarity with the people, they did not begin to sing the national anthem at all. And in the end, they deserved criticism already from the part of society supporting the authorities. Before the second match with Wales – the players sang the anthem. And the Iranian authorities took advantage of the victory that followed, calling on the people to leave the protests and unite in a burst of national pride.

Now in Tehran, and not only there, they are waiting for the upcoming game on Tuesday between the teams of Iran and the United States, which have not met at the World Championships since 1998 in France.

It depends on the results of the game which of the two teams can leave the group. But to this is added the historical background of the confrontation between Tehran and Washington, which broke off diplomatic relations after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

As the American magazine Time recalls, in 1998, the Iranian authorities almost withdrew their national team from the championship after the American film “Not Without My Daughter” was shown on French TV, which contained criticism of the rigid religious principles in Iran. In addition, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not want the national team players to shake hands with the Americans, as required by FIFA rules. As a result, the game took place, and the Iranian football players won, which was perceived in Tehran as another achievement in the fight against the United States. Now the ideological intensity is no less. And the scandals began even before the game. On Sunday, the US national football team published the Group B standings on social networks, where the flag of Iran was without the emblem representing the calligraphic spelling of the word “Allah”. Only the tricolor remained: green, white, red. This is what the flag of Iran was like before the Islamic Revolution. By noon, the normal flag on social networks was restored. The American Federation explained its move by saying that it wanted to express support for the women of Iran, whose struggle for freedom has become one of the main demands of the current protests. For its part, the Iranian federation is demanding that FIFA take action and punish the US team. And now it is obvious that whoever wins in the end during the upcoming game, the victory will not only be a sporting one.

Marianna Belenkaya