“Ha­la” —a word of Ara­bic ex­trac­tion used in Spain to ex­press en­cour­age­ment.

One is not born with po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness. It is a liv­ing or­gan­ism, evo­lu­tion­ary in char­ac­ter, in­flu­enced by di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­ter­nal stim­uli, and sub­ject to adap­ta­tion and change. Like po­lit­i­cal be­lief, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly per­ma­nent. It de­vel­ops over time as one be­gins to in­ter­pret one’s en­vi­ron­ment, one’s his­to­ry, the ob­serv­able events of the day, close to home and far away. I am a child of the an­ti-colo­nial 1960s. I re­mem­ber my par­ents lis­ten­ing to the night­ly ra­dio broad­cast of de­bate in our new­ly in­de­pen­dent Par­lia­ment.

And I re­mem­ber my child’s ques­tions to them about lo­cal pol­i­tics, events in Vi­et Nam and the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis. Among the burn­ing is­sues of the era, fo­cus­ing and ex­er­cis­ing glob­al at­ten­tion and moral­i­ty, were South African apartheid, the Black civ­il rights move­ment in USA and Pales­tine. By 1970 I was a Form Six his­to­ry stu­dent at St Mary’s Col­lege. My in­ter­est had ex­pand­ed from an­ti-colo­nial to an­ti-im­pe­ri­al­ist pol­i­tics and so­cial jus­tice. Black con­scious­ness was in the air and I was read­ing as much about Fanon, Stoke­ly and Mal­colm as about Eliz­a­beth I, Louis XIV, and Napoleon.

Then came the lo­cal “Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion”. My study of so­ci­ol­o­gy, po­lit­i­cal sci­ence and his­to­ry at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1970s added lay­ers of knowl­edge, nu­ance and new con­vic­tion to my broad­en­ing po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tive. The an­ti-apartheid strug­gle for Black civ­il rights in South Africa and the south­ern Unit­ed States (where apartheid was known as “Jim Crow” seg­re­ga­tion) end­ed le­gal dis­crim­i­na­tion there decades ago even if the de­nial by some of their black pop­u­la­tions’ hu­man­i­ty lingers in­to the present and fes­ters. And so does the ques­tion of Pales­tine.

Lamine Ya­mal is a su­perbly tal­ent­ed foot­ball play­er. He is a Eu­ro cham­pi­on and three-time La Liga cham­pi­on. His achieve­ments with Barcelona FC and Spain are made all the more re­mark­able be­cause of his ten­der age (he will be 19 in Ju­ly).

Ya­mal has al­so claimed glob­al at­ten­tion for his as­so­ci­a­tion with a se­ries of old­er women, start­ing when he was mere­ly sev­en­teen. These li­aisons, and his broad­er lifestyle, were sub­ject­ed to with­er­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism and calls for in­ter­ven­tion by his club and par­ents. There was pal­pa­ble in­con­gruity be­tween his ex­ploits on and off the field and his child’s age. Ya­mal has been qui­et on the dat­ing front since, even as he con­tin­ues to grow his on-field rep­u­ta­tion.

Then a few weeks ago, there he was atop the Barcelona team bus cel­e­brat­ing the club’s re­cent La Liga ti­tle (its 29th), wav­ing the flag of Pales­tine - which is recog­nised by 157 UN mem­bers, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, and per­ma­nent Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­bers Chi­na, Rus­sia, France and UK, most of Africa, Asia, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Mid­dle East. This act pro­voked glob­al com­men­tary pro and con.

The re­sponse of the Is­raeli state was pre­dictable. De­fense Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz ac­cused Ya­mal of “in­cit­ing ha­tred”, prompt­ing FC Barcelona to dis­tance it­self from Ya­mal’s ac­tion. Barcelona coach Han­si Flick clar­i­fied that while he had spo­ken with Ya­mal about the ges­ture, he ul­ti­mate­ly re­spect­ed the play­er’s au­ton­o­my, say­ing “it’s his de­ci­sion. He’s 18 years old.” Well done Han­si. Yes, the boy is be­com­ing a man and his po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness is emerg­ing.

<Foot­ball and Is­rael>

Is­rael was a found­ing mem­ber of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (AFC) in 1954 and a pow­er­ful one, fin­ish­ing run­ner-up in the AFC Cham­pi­onships of 1956, 1960 and 1968, and cham­pi­on in 1964. But af­ter the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kip­pur War Arab states re­fused to play against the coun­try and Is­rael was ex­pelled from AFC in 1974 on a mo­tion from Kuwait. From 1974 to 1991 they sought World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion via the Ocea­nia and Eu­ro­pean Con­fed­er­a­tions but be­longed to nei­ther. In 1992 Is­rael was ad­mit­ted in­to UE­FA as an as­so­ciate mem­ber. Since 2013 the Pales­tine FA (PFA) has pur­sued the sus­pen­sion of Is­rael from FI­FA for al­low­ing il­le­gal Oc­cu­pied West Bank Is­raeli set­tle­ment clubs to play in Is­raeli leagues.

The PFA ar­gues that this is in con­tra­ven­tion of Unit­ed Na­tions and FI­FA law, and le­git­imis­es Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion. FI­FA has con­tin­u­ous­ly kicked the ball down the road - a pal­pa­ble dou­ble stan­dard giv­en the treat­ment cor­rect­ly met­ed out to Rus­sia, which was barred from of­fi­cial com­pe­ti­tions by the glob­al body with­in days of Putin’s in­va­sion of Ukraine. FI­FA, has nev­er put the Pales­tin­ian com­plaint against Is­rael to its gen­er­al mem­ber­ship, no doubt fear­ing the out­come.

Since 2013 it has con­tin­u­ous­ly pre­ferred in­stead to “mon­i­tor” and “eval­u­ate” the “sit­u­a­tion”. The PFA has now de­cid­ed to seek jus­tice from the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport. At FI­FA’s May Con­gress PFA Pres­i­dent Jib­ril Ra­joub, re­fus­ing to stand along­side Is­rael FA Vice Pres­i­dent Basim Sheikh Suli­man and par­tic­i­pate in Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no’s op­por­tunist the­atre, said “I can­not shake the hand of some­one the Is­raelis have brought to white­wash their fas­cism and geno­cide! We are suf­fer­ing.” The Is­rael ques­tion will not dis­ap­pear from FI­FA’s agen­da. Sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian cause has been broad­ly de­scribed as “an­ti­semitism” by Is­raeli state of­fi­cials and some in West­ern gov­ern­ments and me­dia.

Icon­ic for­mer France in­ter­na­tion­al Er­ic Can­tona dis­agrees with this de­scrip­tion, say­ing “De­fend­ing the hu­man rights of Pales­tini­ans does not mean you are pro-Hamas. Say­ing ‘Free Pales­tine’ does not mean you are an­ti­se­mit­ic or ‘want all the Jews gone.’ ‘Free Pales­tine’ means free Pales­tini­ans from the Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion that’s been rob­bing them their ba­sic hu­man rights for 75 years.” The Span­ish State and peo­ple al­so dis­agree.

<Spain leads>

Ire­land, a coun­try with a long his­to­ry of an­ti-colo­nial strug­gle, has his­tor­i­cal­ly been at the fore of the quest for an eth­i­cal Eu­ro­pean pol­i­cy on Pales­tine. Since the start of the Is­raeli war on Gaza the po­si­tion of Swe­den, Nor­way, Bel­gium, and Slove­nia has been shaped by pro-Pales­tine pop­u­lar protests and civ­il so­ci­ety mo­bil­i­sa­tion. Pop­u­lar protest is al­so build­ing in Italy and the Unit­ed King­dom al­though not yet with the same ef­fect on gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

These ac­tions re­flect the grow­ing alien­ation be­tween Eu­ro­pean pub­lic opin­ion and the tra­di­tion­al pro-Is­rael poli­cies of many gov­ern­ments. But it is Spain’s broad left-wing coali­tion gov­ern­ment that has adopt­ed the for­eign pol­i­cy most dis­tinct from oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries re­gard­ing the Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict.

The coali­tion in­cludes the Span­ish Com­mu­nist Par­ty and Izquier­da Uni­da (Unit­ed Left), to­geth­er with oth­er pro­gres­sive re­gion­al par­ties (the Basque and Cata­lan sep­a­ratists) that sup­port Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez and his Span­ish So­cial­ist Work­ers Par­ty. All of these par­ties em­brace the “two state so­lu­tion” - as Trinidad and To­ba­go does - but they al­so sup­port Pales­tin­ian re­sis­tance to Is­rael and all de­coloni­sa­tion ef­forts, al­beit in dif­fer­ent ways and to vary­ing de­grees. In re­sponse to Is­raeli crit­i­cism of Ya­mal, the Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter said “Those who think that wav­ing the flag of a state is ‘in­cit­ing ha­tred’, they have ei­ther lost their minds or they have been blind­ed by their own dis­grace. Lamine just ex­pressed the sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pales­tine that mil­lions of Spaniards feel.

Yet an­oth­er rea­son to be proud of him.” What is tak­ing place in Spain is broad grass­roots sol­i­dar­i­ty and civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tion root­ed, as with the Irish, in a shared his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence of strug­gle against State-spon­sored vi­o­lence and fas­cism. While Cat­alo­nia’s FC Barcelona may dis­tance it­self from Ya­mal’s pol­i­tics, the Basque Coun­try’s Ath­let­ic Club Bil­bao does not.

The club, a flag bear­er of Basque na­tion­al­ism, or­gan­ised a sol­i­dar­i­ty event with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple last year. A few months ago Pep Guardi­o­la, a Cata­lan, sum­marised Span­ish pop­u­lar opin­ion, say­ing “The world has aban­doned Pales­tine. We have done ab­solute­ly noth­ing. They are not to blame for hav­ing been born there. We have all al­lowed an en­tire peo­ple to be de­stroyed. The dam­age is done and it is ir­repara­ble. I can’t imag­ine a sin­gle per­son in this world who could de­fend the mas­sacres in Gaza.”

The Woe Cup kicks off in three weeks and some host cities with ac­tive pro-Pales­tine or­gan­i­sa­tions have been flagged for like­ly protests - Boston, Los An­ge­les, New York and San Fran­cis­co (USA), Toron­to and Van­cou­ver (Cana­da) and Mex­i­co City. Dur­ing a May 2025 me­dia con­fer­ence with FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no at the White House, Don­ald Trump in­di­cat­ed such protests will be al­lowed in USA, once “or­der­ly”. Se­cu­ri­ty will be heavy but out­right bans are not ex­pect­ed. We shall see how that goes. Mean­time, the games beck­on.

I am a Brasil sup­port­er of six­ty years stand­ing, “through thick and thin” since 1966. I have nev­er sup­port­ed any oth­er team in the World Cup - ex­cept Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2006. That will nev­er change. But you know what? HA­LA LAMINE! HA­LA ES­PAÑA!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.