分类： politics

A cross-party independent British Member of Parliament, Iqbal Mohamed, has launched a formal call for urgent government intervention to cut ties between English football and corporations accused of complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid policies, and reported war crimes against the Palestinian people.

In an official letter addressed to UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy dated Wednesday, and shared publicly via his social media channels on June 24 2026, Mohamed laid out his case that top-flight English football is being used to ‘sportswash’ grave human rights violations against Palestinians. He argued that the English Premier League (EPL), its 20 member clubs, and the Football Association (FA) — the governing body of English football — have no business maintaining commercial partnerships with firms linked to documented abuses of Palestinian human rights.

Mohaved’s appeal draws heavily on a new investigative report released by UK-based pro-Palestinian campaign group War on Want, titled *Red Card: English Premier League Sportswashing of Israel’s Atrocities against the Palestinians*. According to the MP, the investigation identifies 16 major sponsoring companies that the United Nations and other leading international authoritative bodies have linked to complicity in Israeli violations. The named firms include global brands Alphabet/Google, AXA, BP, Canon, Carlsberg, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Expedia/Hotels.com, Eurobank, Evelyn Partners, HPE, HSBC, Meta, Oracle, Sony, and Standard Chartered.

The report further finds that at least 10 top-flight clubs — Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur — maintain direct sponsorship deals with one or more of these companies. Five clubs — Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City, and Manchester United — were named as the most deeply connected to firms that facilitate Israeli atrocities, while Arsenal, Fulham, both Manchester clubs and Newcastle United were also flagged for potential implication through the activities of their majority owners.

Mohamed also noted that every EPL club receives indirect backing from Barclays, the league’s headline sponsor. While Barclays ended its practice of underwriting Israeli wartime bonds in 2024, other major sponsors maintain active operations in occupied territories. Coca-Cola, for example, holds subsidiaries and licensing agreements in Israel that operate facilities including agricultural vineyards in occupied East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, all territories held by Israel in violation of international law.

“I am very concerned that our country’s great football institutions are sportswashing Israel’s atrocities,” Mohamed wrote in the letter. He added: “Our beautiful game must not be used to sportswash such grave injustice. I ask that you ensure that the EPL must not be a profitable safe haven for companies complicit in atrocities.”

Mohamed is calling on Nandy to facilitate coordinated action between the UK government, the EPL, the FA, individual clubs, and other relevant stakeholders to end all sponsorship and advertising partnerships with linked companies as rapidly as possible. He also urged the government to enforce a policy that ensures no UK entity, public or private, provides material aid or assistance to Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime.

Beyond commercial ties, the War on Want report also documents alleged restrictions on pro-Palestinian expression within top English football. It found that four EPL clubs — Arsenal, Brighton, Burnley and Everton — have disciplined pro-Palestinian staff and supporters in ways that may violate the right to freedom of expression and constitute unlawful discrimination.

One high-profile case highlighted in the report is that of Mark Bonnick, an Arsenal kitman with 22 years of service at the club. Bonnick posted online criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and following what the report describes as a coordinated smear campaign led by politically motivated individuals who falsely accused him of antisemitism, he was abruptly terminated from his role on Christmas Eve 2024.

Following an internal investigation by the FA, no misconduct was found. Arsenal’s own internal review also confirmed there was no evidence of antisemitism, a conclusion backed by independent Jewish anti-racism campaigners. Despite this, Arsenal dismissed Bonnick on the grounds that his social media activity had brought the club “into disrepute”.

War on Want said of the case: “Arsenal appears to have prioritised seemingly prejudiced and racist views of those who targeted him online rather than its staff’s livelihood, wellbeing and rights – including the right to freedom of expression in support of people suffering genocide, illegal occupation and apartheid.”

As of publication, no response has been issued from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Culture Secretary’s office, the EPL, the FA, or any of the named clubs or companies in response to Mohamed’s request.

In a public address delivered in Ankara on Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly commended Iraqi Kurdish authorities for their deliberate decision to steer clear of participation in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The Turkish leader highlighted that the refusal of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to allow their sovereign territory to be utilized as a staging ground for strikes against neighboring Iran played a critical role in de-escalating broader regional tensions. Erdogan emphasized that this responsible choice prevented a cycle of violence that would have directly threatened the safety and stability of Kurdish communities across the region. “Greater strife that could have harmed our Kurdish brothers and sisters has been prevented,” he stated, adding that in the coming months, it will become increasingly evident how dangerous a coordinated plot the regional actors — including Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Iranians — managed to foil together. This praise from Erdogan comes after months of sustained regional tensions, during which Kurdish leadership consistently distanced itself from the US-Israeli offensive, repeatedly warning that any form of involvement would drag the already volatile Iraqi Kurdish region into widespread chaos. This stance was maintained even amid a steady stream of cross-border attacks targeting Kurdish positions carried out by Iran and Iran-aligned Iraqi armed factions. The sequence of events dates back to early March, just days after the US and Israel formally launched their military campaign against Iran. At that time, former US President Donald Trump told news agency Reuters that he would openly support Kurdish forces launching a ground offensive against the Iranian government. Trump’s announcement coincided with widespread media reports claiming the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was secretly supplying weapons to Kurdish factions to aid in such an offensive. Weeks later, in an interview with Middle East Eye, a top Iraqi Kurdish military commander Sirwan Barzani pushed back against these Western media narratives, denying outright that Iraqi Kurdish forces were facilitating Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters crossing the shared border to launch attacks inside Iran. Barzani made clear that despite frustration over the hundreds of Iranian strikes on Iraqi Kurdish military outposts, his forces have no intention of launching any incursion into Iranian territory. Multiple leaders of Iranian Kurdish political parties have also issued public denials to Middle East Eye, rejecting claims that they have received US-supplied weapons through Iraqi Kurdish intermediaries, following Trump’s assertion that Washington was funneling arms to Iranian anti-government protesters via Kurdish groups. For decades, Turkey has viewed independent armed Kurdish movements across the Middle East as a core national security threat, and has repeatedly issued stern warnings against foreign attempts to mobilize Kurdish factions in regional conflicts to advance geopolitical goals. Ankara has long prioritized maintaining regional stability along its southern borders and has consistently opposed any actions that could expand the scope of the Iran conflict to neighboring states.

For decades, a familiar ritual has played out between Washington and Jerusalem following every regional crisis, ceasefire agreement, and tense high-stakes conversation between U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers. Phrases like “The bond is unshakeable” and “Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad” have been repeated across every sitting U.S. administration so many times that they have devolved into diplomatic liturgy: familiar and reassuring on the surface, but largely disconnected from the practical reality of how U.S. policy actually unfolds. The essay argues that Israel’s strategic leadership would benefit from a far more honest examination of this longstanding gap than it has been willing to conduct in the past.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the country has occupied a recurring paradox: it is a militarily powerful state that remains deeply diplomatically dependent on its closest, indispensable ally, the United States. For generations, this dynamic has created a persistent gap between what Israel deems critical to its national survival and what Washington is willing to allow. Today, a critical, rarely openly discussed question looms: are shifting structural trends in U.S. domestic politics and grand strategy widening that gap further?

To contextualize this dynamic, look back to a defining moment from 1973. During the Yom Kippur War, after Israeli armored forces had encircled Egypt’s Third Army and the Israeli government was poised to deliver a decisive, war-ending military blow, the Nixon administration intervened to stop the offensive, setting a pattern that would repeat for decades. Henry Kissinger brokered a ceasefire that saved Anwar Sadat’s battered Egyptian forces, cemented Washington’s role as the indispensable regional mediator, and left Israel with a hard lesson it has had to relearn repeatedly: when U.S. and Israeli strategic priorities diverge, Israel is always the side expected to defer.

Operation Nickel Grass, the large U.S. airlift that resupplied Israeli forces during the war, was a meaningful and consequential show of support. But it also locked in a relationship of dependency: a state cannot accept critical military resupply from a patron and then reject the political terms that come attached to that aid. This is not an inherent critique of U.S. statecraft, but rather a straightforward observation of how great-power patronage has always functioned. Ancient Athens relied on client states, Rome governed through client kings, and modern Washington maintains a network of allies that ultimately advance the patron’s core interests, not the other way around.

What has shifted dramatically in recent decades is the strategic context in which U.S. patronage is offered. Washington’s current grand strategy is focused on great-power competition with China, requiring that it redirect the vast majority of its military resources and diplomatic attention to the Indo-Pacific, rather than remaining entangled in open-ended conflicts in the Middle East. This shift is not tied to a single ideological stance or political administration; it is a fiscal and strategic reality that has persisted across changes in partisan control of the White House. Every recent Pentagon planning framework, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, prioritizes potential flashpoints in the Indo-Pacific: the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the broader arc of competition with Beijing. What was once the central, consuming obsession of U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, has been reclassified as a secondary distraction from the primary great-power competition.

Even among proponents of a close U.S.-Israel relationship, Israel’s value as a strategic partner is increasingly being questioned by pragmatic, realist analysts who note that core U.S. interests in the region—from energy security to counterterrorism to great power competition—can often be advanced more effectively through alliances with Arab states that do not carry the same domestic political baggage that comes with the U.S.-Israel relationship. This line of thinking is expected to gain more traction in coming years, regardless of which party controls power in Washington.

Beyond the shifts in global strategy, deep domestic political changes in the U.S. are also reshaping the alliance, and these shifts may prove the most consequential of all. For decades, U.S. support for Israel rested on a solid bipartisan consensus that has now fractured visibly. American public opinion, particularly among younger generations of voters and racial minority groups, has grown increasingly skeptical of unconditional, blank-check support for any foreign nation, Israel included. In democratic politics, demographic change drives long-term political outcomes, and the demographic cohorts most skeptical of unwavering support for Israel are the groups that will shape the future of both major U.S. political parties.

Currently, the U.S. provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid under a bilateral memorandum of understanding that expires in 2028. When the agreement comes up for renegotiation, it will take place in a domestic political environment dramatically different from the one that produced the original deal. While the current aid package remains politically untouchable in today’s Washington, it is exactly the type of foreign spending that America First-aligned voters and political movements have increasingly called into question.

None of these shifts mean that the United States is on the verge of a sudden, complete break with Israel. The relationship is too deeply embedded in U.S. institutional, cultural, and political structures to collapse overnight. The U.S. will remain Israel’s closest ally for the foreseeable future, and its support remains a core pillar of Israel’s national security, granting access to advanced weapons systems, intelligence sharing, defense technology cooperation, and critical diplomatic protection at the United Nations Security Council.

But a guarantee that the U.S. will not abandon Israel is not equivalent to a guarantee of unconditional support on every issue. Israel’s leaders must recognize this critical distinction and adjust their long-term strategic planning accordingly. The lesson from every past crisis is clear: Washington will support Israel up to the point that support conflicts with its own broader national interests. At that juncture, calls from the U.S. Secretary of State grow more insistent, military resupply shipments come with new strings attached, and the so-called “ironclad commitment” is revealed to have practical limits.

What conclusion should clear-eyed Israeli strategists draw from this analysis? It does not mean the alliance is worthless—on the contrary, it remains enormously valuable to Israel. But its value is contingent, transactional, and subject to change driven by forces outside of Jerusalem’s control: shifts in U.S. electoral politics, changing generational attitudes toward foreign policy, intensifying great-power competition, and the enduring U.S. ambition to act as the primary Middle Eastern mediator, a role that often requires concessions from Israel.

For Jerusalem, every ceasefire ultimately brings a morning of reckoning. What strategic gains did Israel secure? What critical goals were left unmet? What long-term costs will stem from the terms Washington imposed? These are the questions that outlast any immediate crisis.

Israel’s long-term security cannot be built on the assumption that any U.S. administration will always prioritize Israeli needs over its own core national calculations. A clear, unsentimental reading of the historical record offers no support for that assumption. The uncomfortable, unavoidable answer to the question of whether Israel can count on U.S. support over the long run is this: yes, as a reliable partner—but never as an unconditional guarantor.

This distinction carries enormous stakes for Israeli national strategy. The sooner Israel’s strategic establishment internalizes this reality, the sooner it can prioritize the critical work of building alternative strategic foundations: deeper diplomatic and economic ties with regional partners, greater strategic self-sufficiency, and a more diversified foreign policy that does not rely on a single patron whose top priorities will always be its own.