OPINION - Ending impunity: The need for a boycott of Israeli teams

By Rebecca O’Keeffe

- The author is a former international basketball player and member of Irish Sport for Palestine.

ISTANBUL (AA) - The EuroLeague basketball match between Panathinaikos BC Aktor and Maccabi Rapyd Tel Aviv, held in Tel Aviv last week, is the latest sporting fixture where Israeli fans demonstrated hostile, violent, and threatening behavior.

The Maccabi fans taunted head coach Ergin Ataman and the Greek team with insults and profane chanting before, during, and after the game. Panathinaikos fans have longstanding support for Palestine, having displayed pro-Palestinian flags and banners when their side faced Maccabi Tel Aviv back in 2017 and, under Ataman’s tenure, in 2024 with a banner that said, ‘Stop the Genocide, Freedom for Palestine.’ Ataman, who is also head coach of the Turkish men’s national team, condemned the verbal abuse, while the Turkish Basketball Federation called [1] on EuroLeague to investigate the incident and launch a disciplinary process in order to prevent it from happening again. It appears fines will not even be a deterrent, however, considering EuroLeague just gave Maccabi a €10,000 fine [2] for offensive chants against Valencia Basket and its head coach, Pedro Martinez, in December 2025.

Abusive chants and hostility towards opponents seem incompatible with the universal values of sports. As athletes, we’ve been taught that sportsmanship lies at the heart of sport, a simple yet profound ethos that underscores the ordinary act of playing a game. A commitment to fairness and respect, where all players are equal and everyone is bound by the same rules on a level playing field. While we’d like to believe this to be true, oppressive and discriminatory structures in society are reproduced in sport – none more obviously than in Palestine, where fairness and equality are absent in an occupation designed to deny their very existence. Sport in this context acts as a canvas upon which the broader issues of occupation, oppression, displacement, apartheid and genocide are vividly illustrated and emphasise the need for a world where the principles of sportsmanship extend beyond the game.

- The myth of sportsmanship

How, then, can we trust sports governing bodies to uphold universal sporting principles and protect against violations when they have no red lines, not even for genocide?

When the barbarity of Israel's genocidal regime bleeds into the realm of sport in what scholars have termed ‘Athleticide’ [3], sports officials have hidden behind bogus claims of political neutrality. Even long before the ongoing genocide, Israel has been given total impunity in its deliberate killing of Palestinian athletes, destruction of facilities, restriction of movement, expansion of illegal settlement clubs, and more. The behaviour and attitudes of Israeli fans across sports are an extension of such normalised and systematic violence. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have a history of violence and racism and, according to research, it’s only getting worse. There’s been a significant rise in racist chants, an escalation of violence instigation, and a lack of meaningful sanctions against such incidents. This is what politicians, the media, and sporting organisations continue to defend and protect, despite not being able to guarantee safety at these matches.

After October 2023, both basketball governing bodies, FIBA and EuroLeague, suspended matches in Israel over “safety concerns” and moved them to neutral venues, but the safety concerns are not purely geographic and relocating matches solves nothing. The actual problem is the participation of the apartheid state of Israel in these sporting competitions, no matter where they take place. As expected, relocated matches involving Israeli teams have been met with pro-Palestinian protests across Europe but calls for suspension or boycott continue to go unheeded. Instead of simply removing Israel, the response by officials has been to move matches behind closed doors or establish a heavy police presence outside the arenas in quite a sinister reflection of militarisation more generally.

- Hypocrisy in international sanctions

The use of sports’ soft power to advance geopolitical goals and sportswash egregious crimes is not new, but sporting organisations’ hypocritical and selective application of politics in relation to Israel is magnified when compared to other precedents. For example, FIBA expelled South Africa and suspended Russia and Belarus but perhaps not as well-known is that in 2025, FIBA temporarily suspended the British Basketball Federation and barred the men's national team from international competitions due to governance issues. This is the first national federation to be suspended by FIBA since Russia and Belarus in 2022, so the question remains: why hasn’t Israel been suspended?

Sports organisations have not shown moral leadership and have refused to take decisive action in banning Israel from international competitions. The Arab League boycott and isolation of Israel from Asian sporting competition were hugely effective, but Israel’s subsequent admission to European sporting federations provided cover and legitimacy, a legacy that is being upheld today.

In the press conference after the game, Ergin Ataman addressed the behaviour of Israeli fans and the lack of official intervention, saying, “This is not basketball.” This is not what we as a sporting community condone, nor is it reflective of the values we uphold. The continued participation of a state committing war crimes and the complicity of governing bodies mean the current reality of sport is one we should reject. Until there is meaningful action taken to suspend Israel from international competition, sport will continue to serve as an important site for demanding accountability and justice. The continued activism across grassroots movements and the athletes who refuse to ‘shut up and dribble’ should not be underestimated in that.

[1] https://www.tbf.org.tr/haber/kamuoyunun-bilgisine-2026-01-24

[2] https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/news/latest-disciplinary-sanctions-el2526-rd17/

[3] https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/aop/article-10.1123-ssj.2024-0269/article-10.1123-ssj.2024-0269.xml

[4] https://fairsq.org/uefa-must-respond-to-significant-increase-in-israeli-fan-racism/

​​​​​​​*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.