The Israeli Defense Forces have named eleven Palestinian footballers — players, referees, and coaches — claiming they were active members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations, not the innocent civilians they were publicly portrayed as when they were killed.
"They were presented as athletes and innocent civilians, but who in fact served as terrorists in the military wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip," the IDF said in a statement to Fox News Digital. The military says it is releasing this intelligence now specifically to counter what it describes as a coordinated disinformation campaign.
The names and the allegations
The IDF identified the eleven individuals as: Mohammed Mohammed Hassan Barakat, Mahmoud Kamal Mohammad Ali Al-Rifi, Mohammed Mansour, Ahmed Mohammed Hassan Abu Al-Atta, Abdullah Riyadh Abdullah Khattab, Ali Mahmoud Ahmed Al-Kurd, Mohammad Emad Ata Hussouna, Tariq Ziad Hussein Al-Hour, Mohammed Ziad Hussein Al-Hour, Mahmoud Osama Al-Jazzar, and Mohammad Nidal Mohammed Al-Hawajri.
Three of them, according to the IDF, were directly involved in the October 7, 2023 massacre. Others allegedly held operational leadership roles within the terror organizations. No independent verification of these claims has been published.
The Palestinian Football Association has its own numbers. It reported that roughly 1,009 members of its athletic community have been killed by IDF strikes since the war began — a figure that sits at the center of a bruising diplomatic fight over Israel's place in international football.
FIFA's decision and what it means
That fight reached its most formal stage recently when FIFA's Disciplinary Committee rejected the Palestinian Football Association's demand to suspend Israel from international competition entirely. PFA president Jibril Rajoub has been pushing the IOC and FIFA hard on this for over two years, using the athlete death toll and destruction of Gaza's sports infrastructure as the core of his argument.
FIFA didn't completely side with Israel either. The Israel Football Association was fined 150,000 Swiss francs — roughly $190,700 — for multiple breaches of anti-discrimination obligations, ordered to implement a mandatory anti-discrimination plan, and required to display "Football Unites the World - No to Discrimination" banners during matches. A fine and a banner. That's the compromise.
The IDF framing is pointed: it argues that Palestinian terrorists have been systematically misrepresented as journalists, aid workers, and athletes to manufacture international pressure. Whether that argument shifts anything at FIFA or the IOC depends less on intelligence disclosures and more on political will — and right now, that remains deeply contested on both sides.
The IFA faces its upcoming matches under that banner mandate while its government's military releases intelligence designed to reframe who exactly was being struck. The two tracks — diplomatic and military — are now running simultaneously, and neither is close to a resolution.
