I watched the World Cup final on Sunday evening \u2013 Spain suffocating Argentina 1-0 on a Ferran Torres strike deep into extra time, Messi ghosting through what was almost certainly his last major tournament, Emiliano Mart\u00ednez making eleven saves and still losing.\n<\/p>\n
The first thought that crossed my mind, irrationally but insistently, was not about La Roja\u2019s tactical brilliance or about the end of Messi\u2019s era, but about Benjamin Netanyahu, who had spent the previous week publicly declaring his support for Argentina on The Mojo Podcast, not because of Messi but because of his \u201cgreat friend\u201d Javier Milei.\n<\/p>\n
And, obviously, against Spain \u2013 a country whose prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, recognized Palestinian statehood in May 2024, joined South Africa\u2019s genocide case at the ICJ, imposed an arms embargo on Israel, called for a sports ban on Israeli teams, and sent a military vessel to accompany the Sumud Flotilla<\/a>, making La Roja not just a football rival but, in Netanyahu\u2019s eyes, something closer to a political enemy.\n<\/p>\n He was gifted<\/a> an Argentine national team jersey by Buenos Aires\u2019s ambassador to Tel Aviv on the eve of the match and chanted \u201cVamos Argentina\u201d on camera \u2013 and I thought: this is a man whose own country\u2019s football team cannot qualify for anything, cannot compete with anyone, cannot beat anyone who matters, and yet he roots for a team 12,000 kilometers away because its president is one of the few world leaders who still takes his calls.\n<\/p>\n The question that followed was one that has nagged at me for months but that the spectacle of the World Cup \u2013 football\u2019s most concentrated expression of national identity, geopolitical allegiance, and soft power \u2013 made suddenly impossible to ignore: why does Israel still play in Europe?\n<\/p>\n The answer, once you trace the history, reveals less about football governance than about the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Israeli project itself.\n<\/p>\n Israel was a founding member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 1954. It finished runner-up at the inaugural Asian Cup in 1956, runner-up again in 1960, and then won the tournament outright as host in 1964 \u2013 the only continental championship Israel has ever won.\n<\/p>\n It qualified for the 1970 FIFA World Cup through the Asian zone, its sole appearance in the tournament\u2019s history. For two decades, Israel existed in Asian football as it existed in Asian geography: as a fact. But that fact became intolerable to its neighbors. Beginning in 1958, Arab and Muslim nations systematically refused to play against Israel, producing cascading withdrawals, walkovers, and diplomatic crises at every tournament Israel entered.\n<\/p>\n The final rupture came at the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran, where Israel lost the football final 1-0 to Iran before 100,000 hostile spectators, and then, at the AFC\u2019s annual congress, Kuwait introduced a motion to expel Israel from the confederation. It passed 17-13 with 6 abstentions. After 20 years as a founding member, Israel was cast into footballing exile.\n<\/p>\n What followed was a wandering that mirrored the Zionist narrative itself \u2013 except in reverse. Israel drifted through the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) for the 1986 and 1990 World Cup qualifications, traveling 16,300 kilometers to play New Zealand in qualifying matches that satisfied no one.\n<\/p>\n In 1991, UEFA began the process of absorbing Israel into European competition. By 1994, it was a full member. It has remained there ever since \u2013 competing in European Championship qualifiers, European club competitions, and the UEFA Nations League, as though geography were a bureaucratic detail that could be overridden by a committee vote.\n<\/p>\n And here is the paradox that no one in Israeli football \u2013 or Israeli politics \u2013 seems willing to confront. Zionism was born as a response to European persecution: the pogroms of Eastern Europe, the antisemitism of the Dreyfus affair, the civilizational catastrophe of the Holocaust. The entire moral architecture of the Israeli state rests on the premise that Europe was not safe for Jews, that Jewish survival required a homeland in the Middle East, in the ancestral land, among the peoples of the region, however hostile.\n<\/p>\n And yet, when the region\u2019s football confederation expelled Israel in 1974, Israel did not fight to return. It did not lobby, negotiate, or build the relationships that might have reopened the door. It fled \u2013 back to Europe, the very continent it had defined itself against, and asked for shelter in a confederation to which it has no geographic, cultural, or historical connection. If Europe was the problem, why is Europe now the solution? If the Middle East is home, why does Israel refuse to compete there?\n<\/p>\n The sporting results alone should force the question<\/a>. In 32 years of UEFA membership, Israel has never qualified for a European Championship \u2013 not once, across 8 tournament cycles. It has not appeared at a World Cup since 1970 \u2013 56 years ago, when it still played in Asia.\n<\/p>\n