In the Catalan night of Tuesday June 5 the players of the Argentine football Selection team announced their decision not to travel to Israel to play in Jerusalem. It was at this moment when the risky political, diplomatic and commercial house of cards, built by Argentinian authorities and Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, collapsed. The rejection was driven by the international denunciations of the match, letters charged with emotion addressed above all to Lionel Messi, the demands and cries of Argentinians, Barcelonans and some Palestinians during the team’s morning training session, the conclusions as to the damage to their own images as global sporting idols bearing contracts for trade-marks sold in places as distinct as America, Europe, China as well as in the markets of millions of persons from the Arab world and countries with Muslim beliefs.

President Macri’s intention was to use the Argentine selection team and Messi, the most famous football player in the world, before the world cup in Russia, as a useful tool to further Argentina’s alignment with the United States and the right-wing government of Israel, a government that provides arms for internal population control to the Argentine Ministry of National Security led by Patricia Bullrich. This culminated in an international scandal that exposed the interests behind the handling of the national colours on the part of the Casa Rosada (presidential palace) and its operator Daniel Angelici, as well as the Foreign Ministry controlled by Jorge Faurie who, once the disaster was completed, attempted to hide the evidence of participation of the Executive in the frustrated manoeuver and to blame “the decisions of the AFA.” Yet he had recognized there was a conversation between the President and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had “tried to convince” the Argentinian to have the selection undertake the trip.

The details of the event were recounted a week before by this columnist in the article “To Russia with laments, the Selection within kilometres of the Palestinian genocide” [1].

It was not the Presidency of the Nation, nor Argentine diplomacy, nor the association that controls national football, nor the organizer television company that put a stop to this nonsense. On the contrary, each of them attempted to fan the flames of a fire smouldering for decades, with the Israeli invasion of Palestinian territories and the permanent persecution of their people, in the context of a conflict that left a total of 9,476 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army, both in Israel and in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and with a loss of 1,246 Israelis as the result of actions of the Palestinian resistance since the year 2000, according to the account of the Centre of Israeli Information on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’TSELEM), an organization not susceptible to “antisemitism”.

Underestimation of ignorance

The World Cup is a sporting event that absorbs the attention of a majority of Argentinians. Its impact will drown out the rest of the issues of the daily agenda, even beyond the final at mid-day on July 15, and will be used by the national government to advance in its policies of economic adjustment and impoverishment already agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

In this case, and in spite of the communication strategies of their “experts,” the failure of the whole policy of the “Israeli manoeuver” that Macri left in the direct hands of his general secretary of the Presidency, Fernando de Andreis, constituted simultaneously:

• ∙ A diplomatic defeat for the policy of Alianza Cambiemos, almost as strong as the failure of the attempts to install their first foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, as the General Secretary of the UNO.

• ∙ A negative impact for Tel Aviv through the increase in the visibility of their anti-Palestiniam policy considered an authentic “genocide” by that people and their defenders; where the attempted use of the image of Messi acted as a boomerang and drew attention to the denunciations, over and above the attention that they deserved.

• ∙ A loss of prestige for the Argentinian Football Association (AFA) that, under pressure from the duo Macri-Angelici, decided the game would take place against the opinion of the national team, including the TD Jorge Sampaoli.

• ∙ International loss of reputation for Torneos y Competemcias Clarín, an enterprise that managed international television interests for the blue and white team, in spite of their former manager, Alejandro Burzaco, being under house arrest in the United States and wearing a security bracelet, due to his star role in “FIFA Gate”: the trial for bribery, fraud and money laundering carried out by the sports cable-TV producer in order to corrupt the national and international football leadership and guarantee the commercial rights for the FIFA games in America.

The match that was to take place on Saturday, June 8, was also part of the fundraising campaign of the AFA, presided over by Claudio Fabián “Chiqui” Tapia, director of the first “C” of football promotion, who tends to let go whatever is not useful to the powerful interests behind the throne held by Angelici.  Angelici is a Macrist operator and president of a high-level club, Boca Juniors, which was the administrative laboratory of Macri and his team before disembarking in Balcarce 50. He is also titular head of the Atletico Barracas Central Club, and is also subject to the ups and downs of the relations of national political power with his father-in-law, union leader Hugo Moyano, at present distanced from the government and with the strength and capacity to mobilize and paralyze of the activities of the country.

The strategic and multimillion-dollar reasons, that pushed for the match to take place, meant that the decision was taken over and above the opinion of the technical team of the selection and of the players that have several world championships under their belts.  Yet it is they who know the effects of an overload of matches and the impact of air travel, in addition to the installation and dismantling of football camps, just before the great world football tournament. There was an attempt to mask the facts under a supposed “superstition”, started by Carlos Bilardo in 1986, today rejected by a generation of athletes formed under the hyper-technical training particular to the world elites they are part of, to the play and social networks that multiply by thousands the already fabulous figures of their lucrative contracts. Sampaoli himself, explicitly, although hardly noticed by sports “analysts”, expressed his disagreement and uneasiness with the visit to Israel, after the farewell match with Haiti in the Boca playing field.

The match was going to take place in any event, it was only a question of the place. It was known that “something” was going on, when Tapia and the Israeli Ambassador in Argentina, Ilán Sztulman, announced last May that a match would take place, without confirming in which city. Israel had raised the stakes and was no longer content with Messi and his team just coming to the country, not even with the photo of the champion in front of the Wall of Lamentations that circulated around the world – as happened in August of 2013, when he was seen with his head covered with the white kippa, as dictated by the Jewish traditional, together with the team of Barcelona. Now they were demanding not only a ritual visit but that the match would take place in Jerusalem, with the intention of strengthening their policy of “de facto recognition” of their usurpation of all the territory of the city of the three strongest monotheistic religions of the planet, which, according to the mandate of the UN must be shared between Israelis and Palestinians.

The diplomacy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strategic regional ally of the United States, received last December a new expansionist backup from the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who kicked the negotiating table of the region, ignoring all the multilateral agreements and announced the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. For his part, Macri, from the moment he formed a government, tried to carry out Washington’s policy for the Latin American region, with positions such as support for the unelected government of Michel Temer, in Brazil, pressure on the decisions of the OAS against Venezuelan democracy, proposals for regional and extra-regional free trade agreements, boycotts of the organisations created by sovereign governments previous to his own, or through the militarization of social conflicts in fulfilment of the mandates of the U.S. Southern Command. Having set this North, he did not hesitate to support the move of the match to the stadium where Beitar Trump Jerusalem plays, the team renamed in homage to the present chief of the White House, built on the ruins of the town of al-Maliha, razed and later occupied by Israel; he even allowed his Foreign Ministry to speak of his own possible attendance at the match.

The governmental interests, in harmony with the Israel lobby, were stronger than any international campaign, than the resolutions of the UN and the drama internationally denounced as “genocide”, “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”. The “geopolitics” swept away the “common sense” claimed by Gonzalo Higuain, one of the top scorers of the selection, who remarked, many hours before Tapia, that “obviously, common sense comes first, so we believe that it was correct not to go.” A chapter was thus closed that included many factors imposed from Tel Aviv:

• ∙ To play in Jerusalem, with a religious service in charge of a priest of the Argentinians choice, over and above any condition of insecurity, and it goes without saying, of respect for the Palestinian people.

• ∙ Presence at the Wall of Lamentations, led by Messi.

• ∙ Permission for people to attend a training session, that same Saturday June 9, in the morning “in order to carry out an event with youths so that all could see Messi up close”.

• ∙ Lionel, Agüero and Di Maria should play “at least” 60 minutes and not “a maximum”, as the national media feigned.

• ∙ Double TV production of the match: international, with global and Israeli producers, and Israeli, with local backers.

It is worth noting that the Comtec Group, the Israeli organizer of the event and the provider of tools for the “whitening” of their government’s image, agreed every step with “the Argentine company Torneos, which holds the rights of Selection,” the same firm that has its senior manager on bail in the US.

When the pack of cards fell, from Israel there was an immediate claim to the 2 million US dollars already paid to AFA, to begin to reply to the sponsors; from Buenos Aires and Barcelona the team of Tapia bargained and counter-proposed future friendly matches in both countries. Torneos, which holds the administrative responsibility for the organization, was obliged to take to the field and the possibility exists that they would yield to Comtec the negotiation of the two matches that the Selection has with FIFA in November in cities of the world to be designated.

Following a one-day delay, Claudio Tapia finally announced his “contribution to world peace” with the suspension of the match, although noting that “those who see us as ignorant underestimate us”.

A hard ball

The previous day the Argentine players had been informed of the presence of a group protesting their imminent presence in Jerusalem. A megaphone succeeded in making some of the messages, more as requests than criticism, be heard with great clarity. Maradona, Diego Armando Maradona, as almost always in the world of football, achieved the miracle. His name came with emotion even to the Joan Gamper field, the training centre of Messi in Barcelona, situated in Sant Joan Despi, eight kilometers from Camp Nou.

The message went out: “As Maradona said, the ball must not be stained!” and reached the ears of the bearers of the blue and white shirts. Nahuel Lanzillotta, special envoy from Argentina to the Catalan concentration, wrote up the best description of the situation; paradoxically, he works for Clarín, the partner of TyC in the property of everything to do with football [2].

The amplified voice “began to name one by one the names of the Argentine stars with Messi at their head. The request, never with insults, was the same: “Don’t go to play this match”. The players were surprised, and after the practice, some attempted to understand the conflict in this country to which they were to go reluctantly. In the end, they were preoccupied for their security. Internet, moreover, can bring anything into view, such as Argentine shirts stained with red paint, like blood; the faces of Palestine children wounded only 70 kilometres from where the match would be held; probably someone could read paragraphs of the letter “to the Selection and Messi” sent by Mohammed Khalil, a colleague, player of the Al-Salah FC, who was shot in both knees by an Israeli sniper while he protested during the “March of Return”.  In the letter he said that the Argentine #10 is “well recognized and loved in the Gaza Strip” and asked that “they show solidarity with the Palestine people and boycott the encounter” since “Football and the Selection cannot be used to continue silencing and censuring a whole people that want to be free”. A phrase that is practically Maradonian.

They are not heroes, nor defenders of the cause of the Palestinian people, they are simply men with common sense, which is why they simply stood up and made a shipwreck of the stupidity of the Argentine government and its football association.

07/06/2018

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop & Joan Bishop)

Carlos A. Villalba, Argentine Journalist and Psychologist. Argentine researcher associated with the Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico (http://estrategia.la/)

Notes

[1] http://estrategia.la/2018/05/29/a-rusia-con-lamentos-la-seleccion-argentina-a-kilometros-del-genocidio-palestino/

[2] La historia secreta de la suspensión de Israel-Argentina en Jerusalén: inquietud de los jugadores y temores por la seguridad. https://www.clarin.com/deportes/mundial-2018/argentina-israel-suspendido-amistoso-jerusalen_0_ryvceOEgQ.html