UEFA needs to get off the fence when it comes to holding Israel to account.

Tonight will probably mark the end of our European run, and as long as our fans in Germany behave themselves—which I’m sure they will—it will probably end without further sanctions from UEFA.

There was a brief moment of panic the other day when the fans unfurled a banner on Israel at the home game.

I thought UEFA might take action over it, but if they were going to, it would have been a slap on the wrist, and I think they would have done it before now.

We’re not yet out of the woods on that one. But it’s been a week and they could have issued a notice of complaint, and so far, they haven’t done it. I wonder if they will. If they don’t, it’s because they’ve come to a realisation they should have reached before now. If they do, it’s because they’re still pursuing an inconsistent policy—one that is becoming ever more incoherent and ever more indefensible.

UEFA simply has to get off the fence when it comes to the subject of Israel. I wrote about this late last year. A lot has happened since then, and all of it paints Israel in an even worse light. Netanyahu has now been charged by the war crimes court. There is an international arrest warrant for him and for his defence minister. And even while this is the case, his government is seriously discussing what amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

This will render Israel a pariah nation in the eyes of most of the world.

The only response its supporters can muster to those who accuse them of that is to call us anti-Semites. It is a disgusting slur with no basis in fact. In truth, it is a widely held sensitivity to the plight of Jewish people throughout history that stops more from calling the Israeli state an outlaw nation.

Over the last few years, more and more commentators—many of them Jewish themselves—have urged the football authorities to go where others will not and to suspend Israel’s membership of UEFA. It is not as though there isn’t ample justification for such an action. It would by no means be unprecedented.

Other countries have been sanctioned by football’s governing bodies for the policies of their governments—most notably Russia, after the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian clubs were banned from European competition, a ban which remains in place. To the best of my knowledge, few, if any, of those Russian teams are directly connected to those who started that war. But a message had to be sent, and that message was clear: such acts of aggression would not be tolerated by the community of nations, and football could not stand apart from that.

If we accept that aggressive war is a crime, then Russia had already committed one before human rights violations were even alleged. And once the stories began to flood in about civilians being deliberately targeted, about imprisonment, about torture, and all the other things the UN Charter explicitly forbids, the sanctions only became more justified.

Israel may claim to have been acting in self-defence, which is a recognised right that every nation has under the same charter. But whether the conflict itself is legally justified, the conduct of that conflict cannot be. Numerous independent organisations have made that clear and produced the evidence to support it.

Amongst the evidence presented to the UN and the International Criminal Court were statements from the mouths of Netanyahu and his top officials themselves. Their own words condemn them in the eyes of the world. Their own statements confirm the charges against them. And even if no other evidence existed—and there is plenty of other evidence—those words alone could convict them in a courtroom.

It is no wonder that football fans across Europe believe UEFA’s hypocrisy is almost overwhelming. To decry political statements within football while the organisation itself promotes numerous progressive political and social causes and is willing to ban countries’ football teams for the behaviour of their governments, while lecturing fans on leaving politics at the door of the stadium … it is untenable.

And so is its policy on Israel. It has been untenable for a while. To keep Russian clubs at bay while allowing Israeli clubs to participate is a double standard of momentous proportions and just so we’re clear; I believe that Russian clubs should be banned and that the Russian Federation itself should be told it is not welcome as long as its government pursues a policy of aggressive war.

Any country that thinks invading its neighbour is an answer to a diplomatic dispute, or acceptable in the modern world, has abandoned the civilised path and does not deserve to be treated in a civilised way.

I was previously asked if I would have made the same statements about the US and the UK when we illegally invaded Iraq. And I can tell you now what I said then: of course we were also guilty of illegal actions and the launching of illegal wars. Our government should have been sanctioned in the same way.

It is things like that which make the public think twice about supporting these wars in the first place—and therefore makes them less likely to happen again.

And we cannot, in good conscience, hold Russia accountable for what it has done if we do not apply the same standard to Israel.

Furthermore, Israel’s record of mistreating the Palestinian people goes back decades—whether it’s illegal settlements, detention without trial, torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians, or any of the other long list of offences for which they’ve been accused down through the years.

The international community has failed utterly to treat them like any other country would be treated.

And UEFA, which opened the door to Israel’s membership—when it never should have in the first place—has, in its own way, aided and abetted all of those offences.

As of 11 February, the death toll in Gaza stands at 48,000 and rising. How high does that number have to get before we say stop?

UEFA alone cannot end the carnage.

But it can say that the football family does not accept it and will not tolerate it and it is not just hypocrisy to ignore Israel’s actions while sanctioning those who call them out.

It is cowardly and morally indefensible too.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

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