Eugene Kontorovich: If FIFA kicks Israeli teams out of soccer, it has to also kick out a Korea
The absurdity of the Palestinian reading of FIFA rules is powerfully illustrated by the soccer status of the two Koreas.“I’m boycotting the occupation, but I support it”: The charade
Both North and South Korea’s soccer federation’s are FIFA members. Yet the governments of both Koreas claim the entire territory of the other as their own. Indeed, the constitution of the ROK (South Korea) asserts its sole sovereignty over the peninsula.
So FIFA has two member federations whose countries have 100 percent incompatible and overlapping territorial claims. Under the interpretation of FIFA rules being used against Israel, that means it is certain that one of the Koreas is playing on the other’s territory, which in this case can be remedied only by expulsion.
There is a loophole in the FIFA “territorial” statute for matches played with the consent of the other member federation’s consent — but there does not seem to be an evidence of express consent by either Korea. Indeed, if FIFA acts to push out Israel, it is likely that at least Pyongyang will jump on the bandwagon to cause trouble for Seoul, opening a new theater in the “soccer wars.”
Oddly, a global human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, has taken the lead in the effort to kick Israel out of world soccer, citing supposed Israeli human rights violations. HRW doesn’t seem to have ever suggested the expulsion of the North Korean soccer federation, despite that fact that DPRC (North Korean) football is apparently one big human rights violation. (Underperforming players are sent to coal mines — if they’re lucky.) Odder still, HRW has actually reported on North Korean soccer crimes, without suggesting any action be taken against the hermit kingdom’s federation.
Those who wax intellectually about the “green line” at cocktail parties and sign petitions and pat themselves on the back for their “heroic” stand against Israel’s policies, are often hypocrites who support the very occupation they oppose. If they don’t support it, they are at least not being realistic, logical, or fair in determining what it is they oppose. There are so many residents, in so many hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, huge cities, massive tunnels, highways, roads, factories, the sheer level of investment is awesome. To oppose it by itself, as if one can just bifurcate it and “Israel proper,” is not realistic.WCC Invites Israel-Hating Conspiracy Theorist to Interfaith Event in Switzerland
Everyday Israelis move beyond the Green Line, many of them for economic reasons. Israel has used the communities it built over the line as a release-valve for pressure on its own housing market, for an economic release. Without the housing for the 750,000 residents, the prices would be even more than they are inside the line. Those Jewish residents are never coming back inside the line. Fifty years of Israeli rule in the West Bank is not going to end. There were only 19 years of Jordanian rule and thirty years of British rule. In short: Israel has run the West Bank longer than the last two regimes combined. Think about it.
But the intellectuals and the weekday-warrior boycotters don’t want to think about it. They want to oppose something that is easy to oppose, while they secretly accept it. If they didn’t accept it, if they truly think that everything over the Green Line is unacceptable, then they have to eventually admit Israel is unacceptable. There is no such thing as an investment that has good and bad aspects. There is no bifurcating the investments over the line and within, in a connected, globalized, financial marketplace. Israeli businesses do business on both sides. Banks. Coffeeshops. Gas stations. Road workers. Police.
To boycott one and pretend one can really achieve that is as silly as to boycott air that is over the Green Line. As if the air is not the same air.
The World Council of Churches, a Christian ecumenical institution with a long history of beating up on Israel while giving jihadists and killers like Syrian President Bashar al Assad a pass, has invited an antisemitic conspiracy theorist to lecture at an upcoming celebration of interfaith dialogue at an event held near the WCC’s headquarters in Switzerland.Christian criticism of Israel is myopic
The event will take place at the WCC’s Bossey Institute, located outside of Geneva. The speaker is His Excellency Professor Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam and Shayk of al-Azhar University.
His lecture, titled “The Responsibility of Religious Leaders for Achieving World Peace,” will take place at 4 p.m. on Saturday October 1, 2016.
Tayyeb’s talk is part of the Bossey Institute’s celebration of 70 years of interfaith dialogue at the institution which describes itself as the “international center for encounter, dialogue and formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC).”
For a man asked to speak about the role religious leaders can play in promoting "peace" Tayyeb has said some pretty hateful things.
In September 2014, Tayyeb declared in reference to ISIS that “fundamentalist terror groups, whatever their names, and their backers are colonial creations that serve Zionism in its plot to destroy the Arab world." Earlier in 2014, Tayyeb dishonestly accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
A Methodist church in Hinde Street, London, is exhibiting ‘You cannot pass today: Life through a dividing wall’, a reconstruction of a border control point between Israel and the occupied territories. The purpose, needless to say, is not to show how to deal with a terrorist threat, but to attack Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. A Jewish human rights group which has written to protest has been told, soapily, by the minister, ‘I respect your passionate concern for these issues…This exhibition… has been carefully curated… to promote reflection and prayers for peace.’ I have noticed these wall protests popping up on campuses etc., and they never seem either reflective or prayerful. They are propaganda. Serious, bitter issues certainly surround the whole question of Israel and its wall, but for churches to focus on this in the Middle East at this time is myopic. Not many miles away, their fellow Christians are being persecuted, expelled and murdered by Isis, their cries virtually unheard in our comfortable pews.