Mom! He hit me back!!

So much of the reporting on Israel and terrorism – especially from Reuters and the AP – is obviously biased against Israel. Here’s yet another example caught by Honest Reporting: The AP Reinforces FIFA’s Bias

Israel is used to being singled out for unjust criticism and subjected to startling double standards by the United Nations, the European Union, much of the Western media and numerous academic bodies. But now FIFA, the supposedly nonpolitical organization that governs the world’s most popular sport, soccer, is getting in on the act as well.

FIFA has condemned Israel for an air strike on an empty soccer field in the Gaza Strip that was used for training exercises by Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. This strike did not cause any injuries. But at the same time FIFA has refused to condemn a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli soccer field last week which did cause injuries.

Israel typically retaliates in a more restrained manner than the way they were attacked. When the Palestinian terrorists attack civilians, Israel makes every attempt to target only the terrorists, particularly the terrorist leadership. Their purely defensive wall has proved to be very effective in stopping suicide bombers yet elicited outrage from all directions. Having been bombed and their citizens injured, Israel retaliates by bombing an empty soccer field which has been used for terrorist training exercises. This seems reasonable, except to a “nonpolitical” soccer organization which has criticized and may sanction them. This “non-political” organization that criticizes Israel has not offered any criticism or condemnation to the following actions:
- anti-Semitic banners displayed in European soccer stadiums
- spectator chants about sending Jews to the gas chamber
- Arab and Asian countries refuse to allow Israel to compete in Asia
- FIFA has moved games from Israel because guest teams were afraid of violence, but never moved games because of violence in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt
- failed to ban Iran, whose President denies the Holocaust ever happened, from participating in the World Cup, although the host country, Germany, requested it.
- has not complained, sanctioned or criticized when Israeli players are banned from Dubai
- did not complain, sanction or criticize when Uday Hussein tortured soccer players for losing
- did not complain, sanction or criticize when the Taliban used soccer fields to flog and execute people
- did not complain, sanction or criticize when Argentina used soccer stadiums as makeshift jails
- refused to condemn naming a soccer tournament after a Palestinian terrorist who blew himself up, killing 31 people. The terrorist’s brother handed out the trophies at the tournament.
- refused to condemn the terrorist bomb which injured three Israeli soccer officials

But they summoned up the outrage to condemn Israel for bombing an empty soccer field which is used by terrorists to train to attack Israel.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Jerome Champagne, FIFA’s deputy general secretary, who had personally condemned the attack on the Palestinian soccer pitch, refused to extend a similar condemnation to the attack on the Israeli pitch.

Champagne said he had discussed the matter with FIFA president Sepp Blatter and that a decision on what action to take against Israel would be announced soon. Champagne, a French national, also sent an official letter to the Israeli ambassador to Switzerland. (FIFA is based in Zurich.)

A FIFA condemnation of Israel is no small matter. The incredible passions that soccer arouses in most countries around the globe seem to have few boundaries. For example, it was said that the only time the guns fell silent during the Lebanese civil war was during the 1982 World Cup matches.

Nice. Very nice.

For all the claims that Israel is an apartheid state, Arabs have full citizenship including voting priveleges, and there are hundreds of Mosques in Israel where Muslims freely worship. There is no equivalent to the jizra tax – Muslims are treated equally under the law in Israel. For some inexplicable reason, Israel even gave control of their most holy site, the temple, to Muslims. Those Muslims are now destroying as much evidence as they can that Jews ever had a place there, and they restrict Jews and Christians from praying or even so much as bowing their heads there. I know that it is too much to ask for Palestinians, indoctrinated to hate Jews in schools paid for by U.S. and other countries’ tax dollars, to recognize that Israel has a right to defend herself from terrorist attacks. But the AP and Reuters don’t have even that poor excuse for serving up a steady diet of anti-Israel propaganda. And FIFA should be roundly condemned for its disingenuousness.

“The solution to this problem, as to any other, lies firstly in identifying it and acknowledging its existence,” says FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter. “Anyone who complacently maintains that racism is impossible in their territory is not only wrong but irresponsible.”

FIFA can be contacted about their complacence and irresponsibility here.