Granted, I’m not the most well-informed person in the world, but I was pretty surprised to learn today that almost two weeks ago, on March 30th, Israel bombed the Palestinian National Soccer Stadium in Gaza. Am I that clueless? Nope, the American and much of the world media seems to have slept through that story.
Though nobody was hurt, the rocket bomb created a large crater in the middle of the field turning it unplayable. Israel first said that it did so because Palestinians were using the stadium to launch rockets against Israel. When that was proven false, they intimated that they wanted to “send a message” to the Palestinians. That didn’t play out well with FIFA, so they changed their story to say that rockets where being launched from somewhere close to the stadium. Aha.
This is not the first action against Palestinian soccer that Israel has taken, a couple of years ago Israel assured that the Palestinians wouldn’t qualify for the world cup by stopping several players from leaving the Gaza strip so they could play in a qualifying game. Predictably, the Palestinians lost.
FIFA has said that it will pay to fix the stadium and it’s considering sanctions against Israel. You can add your voice to those calling for sanctions by going to:

http://www.petitiononline.com/FIFAPal/petition.html