Cheering the World Cup through genocide | The Electronic Intifada
Across 16 cities and three host countries, the 2026 FIFA World Cup drew billions of viewers into a global spectacle of joy, rivalry and national pride.
It also unfolded during an ongoing genocide. Yet soccer, and sport more generally, unlike virtually every other cultural and institutional space, has remained largely exempt from the political accountability that three years of mass killings in Gaza have imposed on public life.
The 2026 tournament was the largest in World Cup history. It was expanded from 32 to 48 national teams and broadcast to an estimated global audience of five billion. Sunday’s final alone was watched by 1.4 billion people.
Most of its matches, including every knockout round from the quarterfinals onward, were played in the United States.
It is the second World Cup to unfold under the shadow of an ongoing genocide – the 100-day Rwanda genocide ended in the middle of the 1994 World Cup, also hosted by the US.
But it is the first World Cup to be hosted primarily by a nation financing a genocide.
In 2022, FIFA suspended Russia within days of its invasion of Ukraine, declaring football “fully united” in solidarity. During apartheid, FIFA expelled South Africa in 1961 and maintained that exclusion for over three decades.
More than two years into Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza that has killed over 73,000 Palestinians, however, no comparable action has been taken against Israel...MORE
Cheering the World Cup through genocide | The Electronic Intifada
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