In BDS win, PUMA forced to drop sponsorship of Israel Football Association

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding part of the BDS movement, welcomed today the news that PUMA won't be renewing its contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA). PUMA has been the target of a worldwide BDS campaign since 2018 over its support for Israeli apartheid oppressing millions of Palestinians. The IFA governs and advocates to maintain teams in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Leaked internal messages revealed that PUMA was under tremendous pressure to drop the contract. As Israel carried out its unfolding genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in occupied and besieged Gaza, killing over 18,000, including dozens of footballers, the boycott pressure was only increasing. 'The years of relentless, global BDS pressure on PUMA and the damage to its image should be a lesson to all companies supporting Israeli apartheid, that complicity has consequences. It is also a lesson to the deeply complicit, Western -dominated FIFA, which continues to shield Israel from accountability despite the settlement teams violating its own statutes,' said PACBI in a statement. 'We thank the hundreds of grassroots solidarity groups, athletes and teams across the world who supported the call from 215 Palestinian teams to boycott PUMA,' it added. 'This boycott win is a bittersweet victory as Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues. But it gives us hope and determination to hold all genocide enablers and apartheid supporters accountable until all Palestinians can live in freedom, justice and equality,' PACBI concluded its statement. Source: Palestine news and Information Agency – WAFA – English