We commend the Jordan Basketball Federation and the Under-19 National Team for their decision to refuse to play against apartheid Israel in the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup 2025. This is a principled stand against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its 77-year regime of apartheid imposed on the Palestinian people.
We thank the many organizations and activists across Jordan who mobilized against the match.
The Israeli national basketball team boasts of players and coaches serving in Israel’s Gaza genocide and has met and played matches with Israeli military units committing genocide.
The Israel Basketball Association includes teams in illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s entire military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal and must be brought to an end.
FIBA, the governing body of world basketball, has a moral and legal obligation to exclude apartheid Israel, just as apartheid South Africa was banned, rather than put international teams in the position to have to forfeit their matches.
We call on all sports teams and players to support the Palestinian call to exclude Israel from international sports and refuse to play against its teams. If these Western-dominated, colonial “international” sports structures continue to serve colonial powers, rather than the sport, it is time for the global majority to consider abandoning those bodies and creating more representative, democratic international sports bodies.
We urge fans and anti-genocide activists to continue to peacefully disrupt sporting matches until Israel is banned.