European soccer org to Israel – ‘Stop killing kids, civilians’

The UEFA display came after silence on Hamas’s October 7 massacres, which saw the murder, rape, and mutilation of Israeli civilians.

By World Israel News Staff

Europe’s top soccer governing body promoted a display widely interpreted as condemning Israel, just before a high-profile match watched by millions on Wednesday night.

A banner reading “Stop Killing Children. Stop Killing Civilians” was unfurled on the pitch shortly before the UEFA Super Cup match between Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain at a stadium in Udine, Italy.

UEFA — the Union of European Football Associations — posted an image of the banner on its official X account with the caption: “The message is loud and clear. A banner. A call.”

The move came after Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Salah, one of the sport’s biggest stars, lashed out at UEFA for a tribute post to a Palestinian soccer player allegedly killed by Israel.

Earlier this week, UEFA posted a photo of Suleiman Al-Obeid, a Gazan man dubbed the “Palestinian Pelé” after the Brazilian legend.

The post noted only that he had recently died. Salah criticized the tribute as too vague, asking on X: “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?”

Salah’s comments appeared to imply that he had been killed by the IDF and that UEFA was avoiding explicitly stating it.

The IDF has said it has no record of any military activity that could be linked to Al-Obeid’s death on that date.

Notably, UEFA did not issue any statements condemning the October 7th massacres, in which Hamas and other Gazan terrorists raped, mutilated, and murdered Israeli civilians — including babies and the elderly.

Similarly, UEFA did not speak out against Iran’s deliberate bombing of civilian communities in Israel during the June war, which killed 30 people, among them Holocaust survivors and a child cancer patient.

In August 2025, a Hezbollah missile struck a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, killing twelve children and teenagers — an attack that also went unacknowledged by UEFA.