Nothing so captures the European mindset like soccer. It’s a global sport with scant appreciation in North America, but Europeans are glued to it. Consequently, soccer (“football”) matches become backdrops for activists to shout their causes, knowing that it will attract millions – or perhaps billions – of eyeballs.

UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, held its Super Cup in Udine, Italy on August 13, 2025. It was a match between Paris Saint-Germain of the Champions League and Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League. It was quite a moment for Tottenham fans to be up against the big boys of soccer, especially for a club associated with Jews while the Jewish State is being besieged on all sides in its wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Yemen and political foes.

It was a moment anti-Israel advocates would not pass up.

UEFA had been criticized by pro-Gazan agitators for not coming out against Israel during this war. On August 12, the day before the match, UEFA announced an expansion of its existing “support for the humanitarian efforts for children in conflict zones,” to include Gaza. The wording was careful to not criticize either Israel or Hamas, and just focused on children.

Whatever the adults waging wars think they are doing, the children are innocent. 

Aleksander Čeferin, UEFA President

UEFA took an added step during the match and had nine children from conflict zones where it supports humanitarian efforts – Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and now Gaza – unfurl a banner on the field that read “stop killing children. stop killing civilians.”

Qatar-owned Al Jazeera would use the UEFA actions to generate its own anti-Israel story.

In an article titled “UEFA unfurls Gaza-related plea banner after Palestinian tribute fallout,” the pro-Hamas media site said that the banner was all about Gaza, even when children from multiple countries participated. The article pushed a Gaza narrative with “in the wake of heavy fallout over its meek tribute to a Palestinian player killed by Israel,” it mentioned Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah who condemned UEFA on August 10 for not calling out Israel in its statement.

Al Jazeera would then manufacture history, writing “Nine children refugees from Palestine, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq carried the banner onto the field of play before the game began.” But Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq are actual countries, Palestine is not. The two children from Gaza who took part in the ceremony were in Milan receiving medical treatment, not fleeing persecution “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” which is the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Unless Al Jazeera believes these children are being targeted by Hamas.

Just days before this incident, on August 10, Al Jazeera had some of its journalists in Gaza killed by an Israeli strike. Israel said they were legitimate targets, as they were terrorists paid by Hamas. It was shocking to all that the media company which is owned by the wealthiest regime in the world needed its journalists to make some extra coin from an antisemitic genocidal organization that is supposedly “starving,” not that the journalists were terrorists, which was common knowledge.

The Qatari propaganda company has long accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza. It claims that “Israel kills an average 28 Palestinian children daily in Gaza,” attempting to make the Arab youth the primary victims and focus of the war, and portray Israel as a bloodthirsty monstrosity. It did not inform its readers that children under 18 account for 47% of the population of Gaza, but a much lower 31% of the fatalities according to OCHA, which gets its information from the Hamas run Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza.

When further considering that many of the children between 15 and 18 years old are part of the Hamas war machine, the much lower percentage of child fatalities points to Israel’s efforts to target Gazan fighters, not children. Even Hamas admits that nearly half of all fatalities in Gaza have been fighting-aged males (49%), even though they account for just one-quarter of the population (26%).

As for the 6,000 Gazans who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, Al Jazeera had no concern for how they treated Jewish children. The Gazans killed 38 Israeli children in front of their parents. They took the same number as hostages to Gaza. What kind of people take babies as hostages as a matter of policy?

“Don’t kill children. Don’t kill civilians,” should be the understood motto of all civilized people and organizations. That Qatar and Al Jazeera continue to stand by Hamas after all they have done – and then attempt to misdirect the world towards Israel – makes them deeply complicit in the deaths of thousands.