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DUBAI: On Sept. 17, New Yorkers and tourists in Times Square were greeted by a billboard that said: “Israel is committing genocide. No genocide on the pitch.”

It was the opening gambit of #GameOverIsrael, a campaign launched by human rights activist Ashish Prashar aimed at getting FIFA and UEFA to ban Israel from football, both at club and international level.

The campaign went viral, and has continued to do so in the ensuing weeks. It was certainly noticed by those at the receiving end.

The billboard “was pulled down after three days” due to pressure from the Israeli prime minister’s office, Prashar told Arab News. “That’s how important it is to them. If we knock them out of football, they’re done culturally.”

Since then, billboards have appeared in major cities worldwide. On Oct. 11, a billboard targeting UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin was unveiled in Milan, saying: “President Ceferin, Israel is committing genocide. Suspend Israel now. It’s your moral obligation.”

To explain the campaign’s impact, Prashar looks back to the days preceding its launch. “I always go back to what was going on in the world on Sept. 15. At scale, nobody in the mainstream media globally, especially in the West, was really talking about Israel, genocide and football, not together.”

The campaign aimed to “fill that moral vacuum,” he said, adding that it has changed the conversation primarily by focusing on individual football federations rather than politicians.

“We all knew it was a genocide before we needed the UN to officially say it was one,” Prashar said, adding that instead of wasting time on political leaders whose policies will not change, “we were reflecting where the public were already. You only have to see the stands of Europe, where there were Palestinian flags, banners, protests, people singing ‘we’re the children of Gaza’ across the streets of Europe.”

He said the feedback has been “phenomenal,” and people needed an attainable target to focus on. Football provided that target.

“Politicians feel sometimes too out of reach for people, but … UEFA doesn’t feel too distant,” he added. “Getting them to do something doesn’t feel too unachievable. Why would they not do anything about this injustice?

“On the other side of this, UEFA, interestingly enough, and the federations have reacted with me in a positive way. There’s no one who doesn’t want (Israel) kicked out of Europe in the federations.

“The only two countries that really have drawn a line are England and Germany, but pretty much everyone on the UEFA executive committee — which is 19 members of the UEFA federation — want (Israel) gone.

“We’ve talked to federation heads from the likes of Norway to Greece to everywhere. They want them gone.”

Prashar confirmed that the launch of the campaign has triggered federations to write to UEFA and FIFA demanding Israel’s exit. 

“They were probably already there. They needed a campaign, they needed organization, they needed a political moment for everybody to actively do something,” he said.

“I believe Ceferin was already there. I believe that for slightly different reasons, as a father. I believe he, from what I understand, only put the ‘stop killing children’ (banner) at the UEFA Super Cup because his family wanted that.”

Prashar believes that unlike FIFA, there was a desire in UEFA to address the issue and that beyond going viral, the campaign has already provided concrete successes.

“Step one is most of the federations in the executive committee have written to the president to ask him to suspend (Israel). None of them were doing that before this campaign,” he said.

“From Turkey to Ireland and Belgium and everywhere in between, they’ve written to the president.

“Second step, UEFA really wanted to do this. There was supposed to be a vote before (US President Donald) Trump’s peace plan.

“UEFA even took concrete steps to make this happen. This is how I know it’s real. It’s not just words.”

Under normal circumstances, if a club was kicked out of European competition, opponents would be given an automatic 3-0 win and awarded three points.

Here, UEFA intended to change the rules so that a banned team would be replaced, meaning that smaller clubs would not suffer financially by losing gate money from an abandoned home match.

Prashar said taking such a step shows the seriousness with which UEFA is taking the matter, though political developments over the last week have held up progress on the vote.

“They changed their rules and regulations to actually make that happen. The only reason … it still hasn’t happened is Trump’s peace plan. We’re reigniting that conversation right now,” he added.

Even if there is a ceasefire, “Palestinians are occupied and basically under the rule of the Israeli regime,” he said.

“We didn’t let the Nazis go and play a football game the day that the bombs stopped after the Second World War. We actually suspended them for eight years.”

FIFA’s stance is significantly different to UEFA’s, with the sport’s governing body having consistently shied away from taking major decisions due to political pressure.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino is “morally consistent,” Prashar said. “He didn’t want to throw Russia out (in 2022). It was 12 European federations that made that happen … They forced the initiative.

“This is kind of what we want federations to do now — step into that moral void and force the initiative. FIFA on their own won’t suspend Israel.”

When Infantino says politics should not be in football, “genocide isn’t politics, it’s a crime against humanity,” said Prashar.

“When you decide that you’re not going to take a stand against something morally reprehensible that we as a society have said is the ultimate crime, you’ve taken the side of the genociders. You’re not being neutral.”

At club and international level, there have been demands to boycott teams representing Israel. Fan groups have urged Aston Villa’s Europa League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv in November to be called off.

Meanwhile, the football federations of Italy and Norway have expressed a clear desire not to face Israel in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, said Prashar.

The football federations of Spain, France, Belgium, Portugal and others must “show solidarity” with Italy and Norway, he added.

“People need to understand … why UEFA is super pivotal to this,” he said. “It doesn’t just mean the suspension of Israeli clubs. It means they’re suspended from the Nations League, the European Championship, and under 21s, 19s and 17s football, which make a lot of revenue as well.

“But also they’re suspended from the UEFA subsidy. If they lost that, the (Israeli) league will be bankrupt.”

Prashar added: “Israeli football has no way of coming back, even if they’re not banned by FIFA. They’re finished as an entity. That’s why the UEFA push is really important.”

He believes that by banning Israel from football, the world would send a clear message: “No to their crimes, no to apartheid, no to genocide, no to occupation.” 

He added: “The reason football is so important is it’s the only true global cultural item If the domino goes, every other domino goes. Every other cultural item goes.

“We only have to look at apartheid South Africa to look at the domino effect. That’s exactly how it played out, and that’s exactly how it will play out again.”

Prashar insists that speculative stories in the media reassuring Israel of its place in UEFA are mere propaganda. 

“The reason they’re doing that is they know UEFA’s policy is not to respond to rumors,” he said. “I believe they’d rather be in football than have a seat at the UN.”

Prashar said whatever happens with Trump’s plan, the campaign is “not over,” adding: “I think the thing that the Israelis would like is the momentum of this to go out. And with the pause because of the ceasefire, they think it’s gone.

“We have a whole second-wave plan that includes actual footballers who are current and retired.

“We have more iconic billboards going up across Europe this time, from Madrid to London, which will make it very clear that people have now decided to pick the side of occupation and genocide if they don’t make this decision.”

Prashar’s campaign is also launching a legal case against the European federation. “I think UEFA is morally obliged to remove Israel, but they’re also legally obliged,” he said.

“A lot of people don’t know that last year, the ICJ (International Court of Justice) ruled that Israel should leave the Occupied Territories, which includes the West Bank, and that every state, entity, organization, business should guarantee that there’s no normalization with occupation … There are two Israeli football teams in the West Bank illegally,” he added.

“Right now, unless UEFA suspend Israel’s league, they’re literally breaking international law. And Ceferin, an international lawyer, should be fully aware of that.”

It will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to justify Israel’s participation in club football at the very least, according to Prashar.

UEFA will “really struggle,” he said. “Also, one of our legal partners has found a soldier who actually did go to Gaza at Maccabi Haifa.

“So if they can prove his war crimes, we’re just going to throw that everywhere. They're literally letting a guy who killed children play football.”