FIFA released a pair of highly anticipated decisions regarding Israel and Palestine last Thursday, and the world’s soccer governing body reminded fans across the globe what its theoretical commitment to political neutrality means in practice: siding with the authoritarian, the aggressor, the oppressor.

FIFA touts a commitment to staying “neutral in matters of politics” and claims that “discrimination of any kind…is strictly prohibited and punishable,” but under the rule of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, neutrality means the powerful win—and for Infantino, that means MAGA. Taken together, the decisions are an obscene abdication of FIFA’s responsibility to follow its own statutes and its publicly stated commitment to human rights. They’re also a foreboding sign of what we can expect from Infantino during this summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

FIFA issued two decisions regarding the Israel Football Association. The first responded to a formal complaint by the Palestinian Football Association that its Israeli counterparts were staging matches on illegally annexed land in the West Bank. This complaint is based on facts, not contentions. In 2024, the United Nations pinpointed at least eight Israeli soccer clubs that have either developed or staged matches “in Israeli colonial settlements of the occupied West Bank.” The following year, the sports and human rights group FairSquare published a letter by international scholars explaining how Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, UN Security Resolutions 446 and 2334, and rulings by the International Criminal Court (ICJ) in both 2004 and 2024. Human Rights Watch has been providing evidence for a decade that the Israel Football Association has organized matches on “settlements in the West Bank on land unlawfully taken from Palestinians.”

And yet, FIFA’s Governance, Audit, and Compliance Committee decided that no action was required because “the final legal status of the West Bank remains an unresolved and highly complex matter under public international law.” That would be news to the ICJ and a cavalcade of international law specialists. In response, former ICJ judge Michael Dugard went off: “FIFA and UEFA [the Union of European Football Associations] have to be held accountable for deliberately contradicting an International Court of Justice ruling on the Palestinian occupied territories.”

Current Issue

December 2026 Issue

In the second ruling, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee found that the Israel Football Association failed to do anything meaningful to curtail racist and proudly violent behavior by the Israeli soccer team Beitar Jerusalem FC, whose ultras are infamous for their racism and bigotry. The club’s most devoted fans often chant “Death to Arabs” during matches and belt out songs with lines like, “I don’t care how many and how they will get killed / Eliminating Arabs makes me thrilled.”

At times, the ruling was scathing, asserting that “by failing to condemn or remediate discriminatory practices and exclusionary policies—particularly those affecting Palestinians—the IFA has become institutionally complicit in a system that violates the core values of the game.” It added, “This complicity not only exposes the association to disciplinary liability but also damages the moral authority of football as a tool for social cohesion and intercultural dialogue.”

In short, the IFA breached FIFA rules outlawing (1) “offensive behavior and violations of the principles of fair play” and (2) “discrimination and racist abuse.”

What was FIFA’s response to these breaches of its neutrality doctrine? A trifling fine, a “warning” for the IFA, and a requirement “to display in its next three A-level FIFA competition matches at home a significant and highly visible banner with the words ‘Football United the World—No to Discrimination’ alongside the Israeli Football Association’s logo.” Seriously. A banner. One that will surely be mocked endlessly among the Beitar Jerusalem thugs.

In short, FIFA’s two rulings managed to lie about basic facts while issuing a light slap on the wrist to Israel for violating core antidiscrimination principles. The decisions were a double betrayal for the Palestinian Football Association, which had been patiently following FIFA procedures in the hope of securing some modicum of justice. But FIFA-style “neutrality” favors the powerful, and right now that means being a party to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Infantino’s shameless cover-ups of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians dovetail with the positions of the Trump administration. Infantino is effectively a Trump administrative toady—FIFA peace prize and all. It means that even though Israel did not even sniff the World Cup, its shadow—alongside Trump’s—will be cast over the 2026 tournament.

Infantino’s deference to Trump can be most clearly with FIFA’s treatment of the Iranian team, which did make the World Cup, an accomplishment secured in Azadi stadium, a famous sports complex that the United States and Israel have since leveled. Again, this “war crime” was done without a peep from Infantino who is too busy pledging to build a network of soccer fields to replace the actual people in Gaza. Infantino could teach a master class in sycophancy and sportswashing. Few people can use sports to run interference for war criminals and deflect attention from the bloody work of empire like Infantino.

The Iranian team is due to play its first rounds in the United States, and Trump has already threatened the team, posting on social media, “The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety.”

Iran has asked FIFA to have their games moved to Mexico, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is amenable to it. And yet, Infantino has rejected this plea, lest it embarrass Trump—never mind how it endangers Iranian players, coaches, and their families.

Even though the war on Iran and the genocide in Gaza are issues that Infantino wants to conceal during the World Cup, don’t expect the people in the United States, Canada, and Mexico to let them. International organizations are calling for a boycott of matches in the United States. Fans, not thrilled to have to face down ICE in order to attend a soccer match, are not buying tickets. And there are plans to protest by those who do not want FIFA to get away with its complicity in war and genocide. The people are ready to remind the world that the beautiful game should not be a fig leaf for imperialism and ethnic cleansing.