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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
What if the shoe was on the other foot?
The Associated Press reports:
"FIFA will pay to repair a soccer field in the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip that was damaged during a bombing this month.
Soccer's governing body said Tuesday it will confer with Palestinian soccer officials in next few days on the extent of the damage to the stadium and stands ...
No casualties were reported in the April 1 airstrike, which reportedly left a large crater in the field. The Israeli military said the airstrike was part of an effort to deter possible attacks after an increase in rocket launches from Gaza ...
FIFA stressed it equally supported Palestinian and Israeli soccer. "
I have no problem with FIFA repairing the soccer field; after all, the Palestinians didn't do the damage themselves and it is disupted whether the field was used for airstrikes against Israel. But I'm wondering whether FIFA would help rebuild an Israeli soccer field if Palestinians damaged a pitch in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Haifa?
Posted by Paul Tuns on April 11, 2006 in Sports | Permalink
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Comments
Paul,
Yes, the PA's "firm" has attacked an Israeli football pitch and no, FIFA has not offered to repair it:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498814644&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Posted by: Paul Canniff | 2006-04-11 7:19:34 PM
As much as I agree that groups can be biased against Israel, I think that helping the Palistianians build a soccer pitch is a poor example of such bias.
Palestianians are poor. They can't afford to rebuild much, let alone a soccer pitch. The Israelis, being much wealthier, could. Charity, quite rightly, is most often linked to economic circumstance. Until FIFA comes out distinctly anti-Israel, you can't assume anything more than FIFA is directing its aid towards the poor.
Don't cry victim where it isn't clear there is one.
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2006-04-11 8:28:00 PM
Who the hell is FIFA?
Posted by: Duke | 2006-04-11 8:42:51 PM
FIFA redistrubutes resources from wealthy member nations to the poorer members through a Financial Assistance Program. It's a general policy, so this specific contention re: Israel/PA is a red herring.
Obviously, I don't expect anyone on this site to understand why the FAP could be a good thing...
Posted by: Soviet Canuckastani | 2006-04-11 9:12:34 PM
"Who the hell is FIFA?"
It's the world governing body for soccer: Federation Internationale de Football Association.
Posted by: Soviet Canuckastani | 2006-04-11 9:15:23 PM
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/gross200604111311.asp
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.
. . . When Saddam Hussein's son Uday had Iraqi soccer players tortured in 1997 after they failed to qualify for the 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals in France, FIFA remained silent. Uday, who was chairman of the Iraqi soccer association, had star players tortured again in 1998. And in 2000, following a quarterfinal defeat in the Asia Cup, three Iraqi players were whipped and beaten for three days by Uday's bodyguards. The torture took place at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters, but FIFA said nothing.
Again, FIFA simply looked the other way while the Taliban used U.N.-funded soccer fields to slaughter and flog hundreds of innocent people who had supposedly violated sharia law in front of crowds of thousands chanting "God is great." (Afghan soccer coach Habib Ullahniazi said that as many as 30 people were executed in the middle of the field during the intermissions of a single soccer match at Kabul's Ghazi Stadium.)
FIFA equally failed to speak out when soccer stadiums in Argentina were turned into jails.
FIFA's silence was no less deafening when, according to the International Red Cross, about 7,000 prisoners were detained (and some tortured) in Chile's national soccer stadium after Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.
Nor did the organization threaten Russia with sanctions after Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was murdered by a bomb explosion at Grozny's Dynamo stadium.
As for the Middle East, FIFA refused to criticize the decision to name a Palestinian soccer tournament after a suicide terrorist who murdered 31 people at a Passover celebration at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002. (At the tournament, organized under Yasser Arafat's auspices in 2003, the brother of the suicide bomber was given the honorary role of distributing the trophies to the winning team.)
FIFA also failed to condemn the suicide bomb at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa in October 2003 which injured three officials from the leading Israeli soccer team Maccabi Haifa.
read the whole thing
Posted by: ex-liberal | 2006-04-11 9:30:47 PM
The Palestinians are poor because they prefer to throw stones and blow up Israelis rather than try to make a living.
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-04-11 10:15:02 PM
...but of course, I generalize.
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-04-11 10:16:45 PM
Who's stupid enough to think Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Haifa would NEED FIFA to repair a pitch???
Posted by: Knight of Good Mr. Iron Man | 2006-04-11 10:29:04 PM
The PA is a welfare bum state. Practically all of its money comes from other governments. Undoubtedly, some of that money is used for weapons to attack Israel. They spend a LOT of money on weapons that could instead be used to repair soccer fields. That would be the mature thing to do, but no, stupid westerners just keep funding them whenever they throw a tantrum.
Posted by: dirtman | 2006-04-11 10:53:48 PM
I wonder how long it will take the Arabs to destroy the new field, and the comment that they are poor while the Israelis are wealthy is the higth of stupidity. One only has to take a look at the billions that have been poured to them from the international community to ask how is it that they are "poor". I would also point out that the first thing they did when all Jews were forced to leave 'Gaza' was to destroy the productive greenhouses along with other structures. Claiming victimehood remains more profitable for them, than actually working at something constructive.
Posted by: Alain | 2006-04-11 11:50:07 PM
Hopefully HAMAS will decide to hold a mass rally on the soccer pitch while they are planning more
attacks on Israel using rockets, suicide bombers
and the rest of the murderous misguided and
foolish Palestinians who have been manipulated and treated with utmost contempt by the sophisticated HAMAS leadership. Readers of the Western Standard should go to DEBKAfile Tel Aviv
Israel for the most accurate reporting from the
Middle East. The pitch was attacked of course because it is an ideal site to launch a rocket
supplied to HAMAS by Iran.
Posted by: Jack MacLeod | 2006-04-12 6:19:24 AM
The palistinians are poor because their savage, 9th century death-cult suicide-bomber culture insists that they destroy and kill everything and create nothing.
Let them sink or swim on their own. They don't deserve our (or FIFA's) charity.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-04-12 10:25:56 AM
FIFA is an organisation dominated by European interests. It is easy for us to criticise FIFA and indeed all of Europe for continuing to hand over cash to a completley degenerate society, but remember folks, there are 20+ 000 000 legal Muslims living in Europe (and many many more illegal ones) who've decided that thay share a common destiny with the "suicide-bombing entity". When you see the behaviour of the "youths" in France, Sweden and the Netherlands towards native (ie white) Europeans, it is small wonder the Europeans just quietly hand over the cash. Beats getting your faced kicked in.
Posted by: cracker_crusader | 2006-04-12 11:13:36 AM
That's just another way of saying Euroweenies are cowards who have already surrendered to a bunch of illiteral 16 year old muslim thugs at the first sign of violence.
I just hope we can empty that EUrinal of art and literature before the some idiot Mullah decides it's against Allah and burns it all.
How the hell did we allow a bunch of Eurotrash losers to be the guardians of so much of western society's heritage? Aside from that is was invented there? lol.
Post-WWII it should have been obvious that those jackasses couldn't be trusted with self-government. We should have just dismantled all the good stuff out of there and let the place go back to nature.
And I'm only half kidding. What a bunch of losers they have become. The real tragedy is that Canada isn't too far behind...
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-04-12 11:50:18 AM
"FIFA is an organisation dominated by European interests."
Ah, so that explains why Lennart Johansson, the president of UEFA and presumably the steward of European football interests lost out in the election of FIFA president to Sepp Blatter, who rallied African and Asian association votes, leading to South Africa getting World Cup 2010 and the World Club Championship being staged last year in Japan.
Alles klaar.
Posted by: Paul Canniff | 2006-04-12 3:20:14 PM
Who cares?
Posted by: PGP | 2006-04-13 3:36:59 PM
Paul:
If it were NOT in Europe's interests for those things to have occurred, they would not have happened. I stand by my comments on FIFA. On the other hand, that doesn't preclude them from becoming dominated by 3rd World interests at some time later, and the Durban COnference on Racism is an example of shameful 3rd World anti-semitic ranting. Hence FIFA's positioning themselves now to be on the "right side" of future history...
En dis darem baaie ver van klaar...
Posted by: cracker-crusader | 2006-04-13 5:28:01 PM
Ezra Levants letter to the Globe and Mail, April 13.
Dear Sirs,
I was absolutely horrified to read what the Alberta Human-rights commission has the right to do, as do other provincial human rights commissions. The last time I heard of organizations that attempt to compel people to see the error of their views, renounce their beliefs etc. they were called the Spanish Inquisition, the Stalin Show trials and Maoists.
Are we so afraid of offending Muslims and others that we must relinquish freedom of expression, freedom of the press and submit to fascism of the left. I was under the impression the WW II was fought to preserve those freedoms or was it all in vain.
Maxim Engel
Posted by: Maxim Engel | 2006-04-14 6:29:00 PM
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