#GameOverIsrael: Athletes call on UEFA to bar Israel from European football

More than 70 professional athletes and several major human rights groups have launched a new push urging UEFA to suspend Israel from European football, arguing that the governing body can no longer claim to uphold the values it celebrates while continuing to host a state accused of genocide and apartheid.

The campaign, branded #GameOverIsrael, has been gathering momentum since September, but its latest intervention marks the most coordinated pressure yet on UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin.

In a letter addressed directly to Ceferin last week, the coalition demands an immediate suspension of Israel from all UEFA competitions. According to campaign’s director Ashish Prashar, UEFA’s moral threshold should not be ambiguous. 

“UEFA suspended the Yugoslavian team after the siege of Sarajevo. Ceferin knows this history well, he fought in the ten-day war for Slovenia’s independence. Those who ordered the attacks on Sarajevo were later convicted of war crimes,” Prasher tells TRT World.

“Coincidentally, it has recently surfaced that wealthy Europeans may have paid Serbians to hunt Bosnian civilians during the siege; it's now being investigated by Italy’s high court.”

Prashar says the parallel is hard to ignore, pointing to Westerners ‘signing’ bombs destined for civilians in Gaza. “If UEFA acted then, they must act now,” he adds.

Written by Game Over Israel, Athletes 4 Peace, the Gaza Tribunal and the Hind Rajab Foundation, the letter reflects a growing sentiment among athletes that football can no longer turn a blind eye to the lives of Palestinians living under occupation and siege.

The letter states that “no shared venue, stage, or arena in international civil society should welcome a regime that commits genocide, apartheid, and other crimes against humanity,” and warns that Israel’s impunity “will only be ended by the weight of collective conscientious action,” including blocking its entry to sporting and cultural events: a tactic that mirrors historic boycotts of apartheid South Africa.

Sports boycotts played a major role in isolating apartheid South Africa. Being banned from the Olympics, FIFA, and most international competitions undermined the regime’s legitimacy and created sustained global pressure that contributed to its eventual collapse.

Among the signatories of the letter are several high-profile players, including World Cup winner Paul Pogba, Dutch forward Anwar El Ghazi, Morocco’s Hakim Ziyech, and Spain’s Adama Traore. 

For the campaign, UEFA’s own rhetoric has become central to its challenge: allowing a state committing mass atrocities to remain within the sport, the letter argues, “risks severing football from its heart and soul – humanity.”

‘Sportwashing crimes’

According to the coalition, any international organisation that continues engaging with Israel “must take immediate steps to remove them and sever all ties,” adding that complicity is simply “not doing what you know is right when faced with irrefutable evidence.”

The push comes amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, where more than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, according to the Health Ministry. Another 170,000 have been injured, and the besieged enclave has been rendered uninhabitable.

“The campaign was brought together by my partner [political strategist] Mary Rinaldi and myself,” Prashar explains. “We’ve always believed Israel has used sport, especially football, to sportwash its crimes. There should be no normalisation in a time of prolonged genocide.”

He says the team quickly realised UEFA was the real pressure point. 

“Most of Israel’s football life is in Europe. If Europe suspends them, it’s over. And the federations know they can act, they boycotted Russia in 2022.”

Rinaldi, who co-directs the #GameOverIsrael campaign, says that before their intervention, “the idea of Israel being expelled from football wasn’t even on UEFA’s radar.”

“Efforts aimed at FIFA had been futile. Infantino (FIFA President) is aligned with Washington. It was going nowhere. European federations, on the other hand, had both the power and the precedent,” she tells TRT World.

Working with advisors including former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, and Human Rights Lawyer Craig Mokhiber, the organisers launched on September 16, the day the UN confirmed Israel was committing genocide. 

That evening, on a Times Square billboard the campaign declared: “Israel is committing a genocide, football federations boycott them now.”

Rinaldi says they wanted a moment no one could ignore: “It was the first time in the media capital of the world that ‘Israel’ and ‘genocide’ were plastered across major advertising. The world’s press picked it up immediately.”

“It was also the first time football was brought into the picture. This was coupled with major protests in nine European countries outside football federation headquarters and major landmarks,” Rinaldi adds. 

Among the countries that saw protests were Belgium, England, France, Ireland, and Spain.

Human rights lawyer and advisor to the campaign, Craig Mokhiber says the legal framework is already clear:

“Human rights groups, from the Lemkin Institute to B’Tselem to the UN Inquiry, have named this a genocide. That alone should compel every international organisation to halt dealings with Israel,” Mokhiber tells TRT World.

“But on top of that, the UN has long deemed Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, and any organisation which has ties to those settlements, financial, cultural or otherwise, must sever them immediately, or risk complicity in breaching international law,” he adds.

As pressure builds, federations and fans will be crucial. #GameOverIsrael expects coordinated boycotts if Ceferin doesn’t act, noting that at least a dozen federations have already written to UEFA demanding suspension.

“It is always a disappointment that the responsibility to move powerful people to do that right thing falls on the working class, on the fan, on the regular guy, but then that is perhaps where the most empathy and generosity in the world comes from,” Prashar says.

Players, meanwhile, must “build solidarity outside the pitch. Together they’re strong, but they need trust, courage, and unity,” he adds.

“For us, we won’t stop. We’re prepared to continue until it’s done.”