This Is The Moment For The UEFA Member Nations To Discuss Banning Israel.

Yesterday, the International Court of Justice issued its provisional finding on South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide.

South Africa knows that a court case will take years. Gaza doesn’t have years. This is why they wanted an expedited process and a provisional judgement along with emergency measures. The court gave them everything it was empowered to do.

That’s important to note because the Israeli lobby is claiming victory because the ICJ did not order a ceasefire; this is not a case involving unprovoked aggression and until a court rules on whether Israel’s right to self defence is valid here that was never going to happen.

But the long and short of it is that the ICJ has demanded that a country set up to protect a people from genocide immediately cease any actions which constitute genocide.

The world changed yesterday. In a small way, to some, and one that does not bring immediate relief to Gaza but it changed nevertheless and like a stone thrown into a still pond the ripples will spread outwards in every direction and you’ll see at some stage where it leads.

It should lead us to a better world.

But of course, Israel is already fighting back, accusing the ICJ, of all organisations, of being anti-Semitic, a charge which is frankly ridiculous and shows how far from the path of sanity the government, led by its amoral gangster Netanyahu, has strayed. The UK and US have shamefully refused to accept the verdict. That’s about what I expected.

But the rest of the world is urging Israel to respect the court and follow its edicts.

If they fail to do so what then? If Israel ends up in open violation of the ICJ, that’s a problem for them because they have spent decades telling the world that they are the reasonable party in this dispute, that they are the nation with laws and respect for law and order and that they are the only democracy in the region, with all the status that confers on them.

Yet those sorts of countries do not openly violate international law.

They do not spit in the face of the international court, and the reason South Africa brought its case forward in the way it did and the ICJ heard it in the timely manner it did is because the world community cannot afford to stand back and wait until a hundred thousand or more Palestinians are dead and the patch of land they call home has been entirely destroyed before they tell Israel to stop.

South Africa recognises that we cannot wait for a verdict in a far-off hearing years after the last vestige of Palestinian self determination has been wiped away.

The bottom line is, one of the highest courts of justice in the world – arguably the highest court of justice in the world – has given Israel an ultimatum to cease actions of a genocidal nature.

They have one month to submit a report outlining their efforts to do so. I would think the ICJ will respond to that report in short order and issue another ruling.

If Israel is found to be in breach of the court, what does the world do then? And if that question seems slightly above our level here then let me put it in simpler terms, one that ties in with the mission of this blog and the reason we’re all here; what does football do then? Russia was banned for the act of invading Ukraine; nobody waited to see if they indiscriminately killed civilians and bombed cities and tried to wipe the country off the map.

Their behaviour was a violation of international law, an act of unprovoked aggression. Football acted then in defence of international law and I wholeheartedly agreed with the decision and still do. Israel’s own actions as laid out by the ICJ are arguably worse.

Yes, their action is different. It was not unprovoked.

They invaded Gaza to destroy Hamas, but if the world is going to accept that answer and accept that this comes with consequences, how would they have responded to the US launching airstrikes on drug labs in Mexico or, in the 1980’s, British missiles hitting targets in the Faulds Road?

The central argument is basically the same … but had London done that, the outcry both here and abroad, would have brought down the government on the first day.

Is football really going to wait for a hundred thousand Palestinian dead, or a million Palestinian dead before it recognises the immense contradiction, the sterling hypocrisy, the crushing weight of its own moral collapse?

Will football really fail to act on what the world is watching, and what the ICJ has ordered stopped? What if Israel doesn’t stop?

If Israel violates the ICJ ruling that’s them telling the world that they’ve gone rogue, that they are an outlaw nation state, no different to, no better than, Russia.

The UK and the USA standing by them at that point will shatter forever our own claims to being morally upstanding … and furthermore, as South Africa has pointed out, will make us co-defendants in a future case if we’re seen to be aiding acts of genocide.

I was proud of UEFA and FIFA when they issued the ban on Russia. That’s a massive moral statement from a game which has been accused of being bankrupt in that regard.

It was football telling the governments of the world that they cannot act so contrary to the ideals of the global sporting family without consequences, and those consequences are larger than they seem, which is why the sports boycott of South Africa back in the days of apartheid was so serious.

It is a huge statement telling Israel that they have left the path of being a responsible member of the global family. It confers pariah status on them on a vast worldwide stage. It is, in effect, an enormous blacklisting, an act which will shake Israel to its foundations and force people within that country to confront the reality and the totality of what is going on here.

UEFA cannot allow, as a full participating member, a country which openly thumbs its nose at the international court of justice, and which right now is pulverising the Palestinian people to the point of calamity. Netanyahu’s disavowal of a two-state solution effectively renders those people without a home to return to, and that’s a further violation of international law and something UEFA should take a lot more seriously than it does.

This is the moment for football to issue its own response. This is a moment for an emergency meeting of the UEFA General Council and a discussion about whether to impose conditions on Israeli membership, starting with their complete compliance with the international court.

Anything less and UEFA has blood on its own hands, and if the organisation itself won’t act, its member associations must.

I am not going to wait for leadership from Hampden or Wembley, but other European nations take their responsibilities seriously and are more likely to play a leading role, and it would not be before time. Frankly, this is it.

The people of Gaza are on the brink of slaughter.

Football must not wait for that to be complete before it collectively says “stop” and ceases to treat the nation responsible with kid gloves. The Israelis themselves are very clear that the gloves are off, and they won’t stop until they themselves pay some kind of diplomatic price.

Football can show moral leadership here or stand condemned. For all UEFA’s sordid history of scandal, a failure to act here would be the one to top the lot of it.