Compare with Russia
“Israel kills 341 Palestinian athletes, but FIFA turns a blind eye,” Sunday outraged one Facebook user.
Along with these words, she attached a picture with the following number. True, the same phrase presented here, only in English, mentions football players, not athletes in general.
Screenshot from Facebook/It is difficult to say how many Palestinian football players actually died – only scattered information is published
A photo of the Swiss president of the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), Giovanni Infantino, can be seen next to it.
With the same image as the source of the webpage s2jnews.comactively in recent days is shared on various social networks and elsewhere on the Internet. Some urges remove Israel from this organization. Others points out attentionthat “Russia killed exactly 0 until FIFA banned her.”
It seems that the war in Ukraine is meant here (it is also compared in some other aspects to the conflict in the Gaza Strip). Russia’s membership in the federation was stopped in 2022 on February 28, just four days after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, in October this year, this sanction was somewhat toned down.
News website s2jnews.com these statistics announced November 20 The article states that from 2023 341 Palestinian soccer players and at least 6 Lebanese soccer players, including a representative of the women’s national team who fell into a coma after an airstrike, were killed by the Israeli military on October 10.
“This deliberate targeting of athletes and the wider Palestinian football infrastructure is premeditated,” the text reads, criticizing not only Israel but also FIFA.
True, it is not explained what sources (official, posts on social networks, club announcements, etc.) based on which such data was obtained.
On the Internet too there is no official summary statistics of how many Palestinian football players have lost their lives in the last 13 months.
Is the number really 341 (in other words, 77 for every ten thousand dead in the Gaza Strip)?
Even the managers of the national team were killed
Gaza Ministry of Health on November 24. announced that during the more than 13-month-long war between Israel and Hamas in this Palestinian territory died at least 44,211 people.
There is a wealth of information on the Internet about the loss of Palestinian sports since the start of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. Especially a lot of it – about football, which exists in Palestine, as in the world the most popular sport. However, the data is skewed, the deaths of individual athletes are more often reported, especially if they were more famous or the circumstances were exceptional.
Not very new – according to the July 26 data provided by the National Olympic Committee, there was dead approximately 400 Palestinian athletes. Among them are football players calculated 245 (including 69 children). In the first two months alone lost his life 55 footballers (and 30 other athletes).
According to the Palestinian Football Association, 24 managers and technical staff of this sport were killed. The country’s football suffered not only human losses – during airstrikes destroyed stadiumsvarious clubs had to close.
23 football players are mentioned among the victims Ahmedas Daraghmehwhich Arab football website Kooora rated as the best a player of his team (it is true that he was not killed in the Gaza Strip, but was shot dead during a raid by Israeli forces in the West Bank), coach of the Palestinian Olympic football team Hani Al-Masdarasformer football player, general manager of the national Olympic team Hani Al-Masry.
Not only FIFA, but also the International Olympic Committee (IOC) indeed took his time issuing statements condemning the war between Israel and Hamas and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.
In contrast to the treatment of Russia, which launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. For example, she was not allowed to participate in the World Cup held in Qatar in the same year. The IOC suspended the membership of the Russian Olympic Committee, although it done only in October 2023.
15min verdict: missing context. From 2023 Since October, when Israel launched attacks on the Gaza Strip in response to attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas, at least 245 soccer players (or about 25 a month) have been killed by the end of July.
If the proportion remained similar, 341 or a similar number of Palestinian football players could have been killed so far (not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank). However, it is difficult to find accurate data during the war, only scattered information is available on the Internet.
The publication was prepared in 15 minutes in partnership with Metait aims to stop the spread of misleading news on the social network. More about the program and its rules – here.
Source: www.15min.lt
