Report by Paz Hasdai, messenger of Walla!
Sports for Qatar - 19.11 (Photo: Paz Hasdai. Video editing: Tal Reznik)
This was no ordinary press conference.
At some point the journalists sitting in the press center in Qatar looked at each other in bewilderment, to make sure that the president of FIFA was indeed speaking for an hour straight, and in an uncharacteristically excited manner. It was obvious that Gianni Infantino had been reading the reports in the Western media for weeks, storing up his anger. FIFA Killed, Qatar under criticism, in Europe and the USA they keep mentioning the corruption and blaming the "surrender" to the demand to abolish alcohol in the stadiums, and yesterday (Saturday) Infantino stood in front of the journalists and took out all the anger: you are hypocrites and racists.
Infantino's approach is completely in line with the mindset of the Arab world.
Corruption in the hospitality tender?
That's how it's always been.
Alcohol ban?
In France, Spain, Portugal and Scotland it is also forbidden to drink inside the stadium.
Damage to immigrants?
The colonialist Europeans are the last ones who can complain about an arrogant, violent and exploitative attitude towards the third world.
"I am European," said Infantino yesterday, "and for what we have done in the world in the last 3,000 years, we will have to apologize in the next 3,000 years before we can teach people about morality."
A day after Infantino's speech, Qatar is aware of its importance.
It is true that the Qataris are a little tired of dealing with the controversial issues and prefer that they have already fallen off the agenda, but they also feel that the FIFA president has brought some proportion to the claims against them. Illegal in Qatar, but the country has made it clear that it will welcome all fans who come.
There will be 200 points in Qatar where alcohol will be sold, and there are quite a few other countries where it is also forbidden to drink on the courts.
The Western media doesn't write anything about it." For
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Choose a side.
Infantino (Photo: GettyImages, Maryam Majd)
The feeling of the Qataris in particular and of the Arab world is that this is arrogance, hypocrisy and racism.
Infantino summed up the ban on alcohol in "If you can't drink beer for three hours, I think you'll survive."
Mohamed Salim, a Sudanese journalist, believes it goes deeper.
"In my opinion, this shows that there is no great love for the Arab world," he says with an apologetic smile, about the attitude of the Western world to the host, "It is true that Europe has hundreds of millions of people, but there are also hundreds of millions of Muslims. And yes, we prohibit drinking alcohol. For us, it is a sin . Where is all the tolerance of the Western world for other cultures, why don't they respect the local tradition? You let an Arab country host the tournament for the first time, and now you want to neutralize part of its tradition and unique character. So there is no beer on the field. Big deal."
This continues a trend that has been going on for weeks.
The Qatari newspaper "Al Sharq" calls the reports about the country an "organized conspiracy".
The Qatari Minister of Labor, Ali Bin Samih Al Marri, last week called it "European arrogance" and "racism", because "they don't want to allow a small Arab country to host the World Cup".
Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Hamed Al Thani described it as "an unprecedented campaign against us".
Infantino obviously chose a side.
"It's going to be the best World Cup of all time, I have no doubt," he promised, in days when the world mostly doubts.
The issue of immigrants and foreign workers is particularly sensitive.
Infantino insisted that "I'm not defending Qatar, I'm defending football, the injustice", but expressed an opinion that has been heard in Qatar for a long time.
According to the FIFA president, "How many of the European companies that earn billions every year, how many of them take care of the rights of the migrant workers?
I have the answer: none.
Because if they change the legislation, their profits will decrease." Mohammed from "Al Jazeera" even added that "many years ago, Qatar internalized the criticism and changed its conduct and laws with foreign workers.
You won't read about that in the West either."
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Can't the game be separated from religion and politics? (Photo: GettyImages, Alex Pantling)
One of the highlights of the press conference was when Infantino compared himself to those migrant workers, when he mentioned his move as a child from Switzerland to Italy and said that "as a foreign child in a foreign country, I suffered from bullying because I was a redhead with freckles."
Infantino's comparison was quite ridiculous, when he compared migration from neighboring countries such as Switzerland and Italy to laborers who traveled overseas and worked in substandard conditions in Qatar, received minimum wages, were required to work in the hot summer, had their passports revoked and according to reports 6,500 of them died and thousands more were sick and injured.
This reminds me a bit of the cute Tel Aviv mother who complained this week to her Indian cleaner that her journalist husband is going for two weeks to work in the World Cup and leaving her alone with three children, and in response the cleaner told her that her husband had died, she had to leave India and go to Israel to work in cleaning, and she didn't see her children For four years now.
Unfortunately, the deep and fundamental cultural gaps are being exposed all the time.
And Infantino's speech illustrated that, at least for the moment, it is impossible to separate the game from religion and politics.
"I think one of the great hopes of this World Cup was for a battle between cultures," concludes Salim, "but at the moment it seems that it only distances the Arab world from the West. People here feel that we are spoken of with hostility and condescension, as if the West is the enemy. I believe and hope that there will be a great tournament here , which will make him forget a little about this tension that developed recently."
The Kadragal is again required to work its magic.
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