Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Responding to Mohamed Salah: Who Killed the ‘Palestinian Pelé’?
Palestine Chronicle Staff
20 Aug 2025
x
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah rebuked UEFA for not mentioning who killed Suleiman al-Obeid. (Image: Maktoob Media)

Al-Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday, August 6, 2025, in an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaza Strip.

Originally published in Palestine Chronicle.

When UEFA posted a tribute on Friday, August 8, 2025, to Suleiman al-Obeid — the Gaza football legend known as the “Palestinian Pelé” — they made no mention of who killed him or how he died.

Liverpool star Mohamed Salah, the most high-profile Arab player in the game, appeared to notice. The following day, Saturday, August 9, 2025, he replied to UEFA’s post with a pointed and deliberate question: “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?”

The comment — a clear rebuke of UEFA’s omission — quickly went viral, drawing nearly one million views in less than 24 hours.

Here is the Palestine Chronicle’s answer to Salah’s question.

Who Killed Suleiman al-Obeid?

Al-Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday, August 6, 2025, in an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).

Born in Gaza on March 24, 1984, he began his career with Khadamat al-Shati before moving to Markaz Shabab al-Am’ari in the occupied West Bank, later returning to play for Gaza Sport.

He became a fixture in the Palestinian national team after his 2007 debut, earning 24 caps and scoring twice. His most memorable goal — a spectacular scissor-kick against Yemen — came during the 2010 West Asian Football Federation championship.

During his long career, al-Obeid scored more than 100 goals. His skill, creativity, and leadership earned him the nickname “the Palestinian Pelé,” a nod to the Brazilian great widely regarded as one of the best players in history.

The PFA said al-Obeid was trying to obtain humanitarian aid amid widespread starvation and severe shortages of food and water when he was killed. He is survived by his wife and five children.

The Cost to Palestinian Sports

Al-Obeid’s death came just days before the killing of another Gaza footballer, Mahmoud Rafeh Shaheen of Al-Tuffah Sports Club, who was also targeted by Israeli forces while waiting for aid. Shaheen was the second Al-Tuffah player killed in two weeks, following his teammate Ismail Abu Dan.

The PFA says Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has devastated Palestinian sports. 

Since October 7, 2023, over 700 athletes and sports officials have been killed, including 322 affiliated with the PFA — among them players, coaches, administrators, referees, and club board members. 

At least 288 sports facilities have been damaged or destroyed, 268 of them in Gaza. The association’s headquarters in Gaza was among the sites hit in Israeli air raids.

As Palestinian journalist and Palestine Chronicle editor Ramzy Baroud wrote in a recent editorial, “In the Palestinian case, the hypocrisy is limitless, though it began long before the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Every Palestinian effort, often backed by Arab, Muslim, and Global South associations, to hold Israel accountable for its apartheid and military occupation has been met with consistent failure. Every time, the response is the same.”

According to Baroudm, FIFA’s “go-to excuse” — that sports and politics should not mix — is “the height of hypocrisy,” given that the organization “seamlessly mixed the two following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Baroud stressed that the “complete moral breakdown on the part of institutions like FIFA” stands in stark contrast to the growing movement of sports fans worldwide, who “refuse to be part of this moral travesty” and are now “unequivocally challenging FIFA’s continued support for Israel.”

With American backing, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians — most of them women, children, and the elderly — and injured over 152,000, according to Palestinian authorities. 

Thousands remain missing under the rubble. The blockade-induced famine has already claimed the lives of dozens of children and continues to push thousands to the brink of starvation.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

Palestine
sports
Genocide

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Whitewashed, Bleached, and Alabastardized: How White “supremacy’s” Subjective Identification of War Criminals Reveals its Deeper Psychopathology
20 August 2025
The manufactured outrage over Vladimir Putin's presence at the Alaska summit was an attempt to reinforce a global racial order.
Mohammed El-Kurd
Guilty by Affiliation
13 August 2025
The Israeli murder of heroic Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif was bookended by accusations that he was part of Hamas.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
INTERVIEW: Fatima Bernawi: The Tragedy of a People, 1978
13 August 2025
“The reason for these military operations was, and still is, to tell the Israeli occupation that we defy it and are willing to resist
Jon Jeter
Black People Who See Themselves in Palestinians Find that Israel Sees the Same
13 August 2025
Israel's brutal treatment of Black solidarity activists proves the truth that resistance to settler colonialism comes with a price.
Youssef Fares
Survivors of Aid Massacres: Israel Is Eroding Gaza’s Social Fabric
13 August 2025
As the world condemns indiscriminate bombing, Israel continues to commit genocide by social erosion.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
There is no starvation
06 August 2025
Firstly, the world’s most moral snipers would never target Practice on razor wire-trapped, hungry hunters and
Khaled Barakat
Saudi Arabia and France are Leading a ‘Political Genocide’
06 August 2025
The New York Declaration doesn't merely betray Palestine.
Dr.Wilmer J. Leon, III
Palestinians are Not Starving in Gaza. They are Being Starved!
30 July 2025
The Israeli government isn’t failing to feed Palestinians in Gaza. They are deliberately starving them. Starvation is their weapon.
B’Tselem
Our Genocide
30 July 2025
B’Tselem,The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, makes clear that a genocide is taking place in Gaza.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
STATEMENT: Without Immediate Intervention, the Last Reporters in Gaza Will Die, Agence France-Presse/Société de Journalistes, July 21, 2025
23 July 2025
“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts…but none of us remember seeing a colleague die of hunger.”

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio August 1, 2025
    01 Aug 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss football, why it isn’t popular in the US, how it can be, sports as consciousness raising, and the nation of Brazil and its Black population. But first, we have the…
  • Erica Huggins
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins
    01 Aug 2025
    Mary Frances Phillips is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She joins us from Detroit to discuss her biography of Ericka Huggins, "…
  • Map of soccer games
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Sports, Political Education, and Football in the U.S.
    01 Aug 2025
    Robert Wilson is a U.S.-born philosopher who has lived in Brazil for many years. He is the author of “The Football Manifesto and Club Handbook: Bringing the Beautiful Game to the People and Making…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Obama Colluded with the Surveillance State Against Trump
    30 Jul 2025
    It is true that Barack Obama used the surveillance state apparatus in an effort to undermine the first Donald Trump administration with the Russiagate fraud.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EDITORIAL: Centenary of Negro Emancipation, Marcus Garvey, 1934
    30 Jul 2025
    “When the American and West Indian Negroes get to know their history…they will have a greater love for the African through whom they have sprung.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us