AS protesters gathered outside Hampden in May 2024 when Scotland’s Women’s football team hosted Israel, UN agencies reported that Israeli tanks were attacking schools in Jabalia, Gaza.
As the game played out to empty stands, Israeli troops entered Rafah on Gaza’s southern border, where more than a million Palestinians were sheltering after months of daily bombardment.
Last week, the Scottish Football Association (SFA) announced that the national stadium would be renamed “Barclays Hampden” following a sponsorship deal with the bank, in a move that was widely condemned.
Israel relies on culture and sport to legitimise its apartheid regime. With regard to both, we can look to apartheid South Africa as an example of the power boycotts have to topple criminal, apartheid regimes.
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The 1977 Gleneagles Agreement saw Commonwealth countries agree to an effective sporting boycott of South Africa, with Barclays’ 1986 withdrawal from the country a significant moment, ultimately contributing to ending apartheid
in 1994. Earlier this year I attended a protest called by Barclays staff at its corporate Glasgow offices, demanding an end to its involvement with Israel. One staff member said: “I come to work to take care of my family – not destroy others’.”
Another said: “I feel shame every day.”
Barclays is part of a group of international banks that help the Israeli government to sell debt via bonds.
A recent UN report highlighted how this facilitates Israel’s genocide: “Treasury bonds have played a critical role … from 2022 to 2024, the Israeli military budget grew from 4.2% to 8.3% of GDP, driving the public into a 6.8% deficit.
Israel funded this ballooning budget by increasing its bond issuance, including $8bn in March 2024 and $5bn in February 2025”.
Without Barclays and the other banks, Israel could not raise funds for its ongoing genocide in Gaza in this way. Protest groups have claimed that Barclays holds more than £2bn in shares and £6.1bn in loans and underwriting to nine companies whose weapons, components and technologies are being used by Israel to attack Palestinians. Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Football Association, said in August that at least 774 members of Palestine’s sporting community have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
They included 355 football players (such as the “Palestinian Pele”, Suleiman Al-Obeid), 142 scouts, and 15 sports journalists. He also said 288 sports facilities in the West Bank and Gaza have been either partially or totally destroyed by Israel.
Further Israeli atrocities date back long before October 7, 2023. In 2014, an Israeli warship killed four boys on a beach in Gaza, as they played football.
In 2008, Israeli strikes killed four children as they played football. In 2004, an Israeli tank killed Omar Zara’an, nine, as he played football.
In 2001, an Israeli tank killed Khalil al-Mughrabi, 11, wounding two more of his friends, as they played football. Yet Palestinian football endures.
Palestine’s men’s and women’s teams recently defeated Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with the men’s team in recent days also qualifying for the quarter-finals of the Arab Cup for the first time in its history.
As Scotland qualified for the World Cup, Palestine were playing Catalonia in a charity match in front of 30,000, with ticket revenue donated to Palestinian humanitarian initiatives.
A few days earlier, they played the Basque Country, with Palestinian players taking to the pitch with white roses in remembrance of the children killed by Israel.
The SFA have supported similar humanitarian initiatives to their Catalonian and Basque counterparts.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, I attended a Scotland-Poland friendly at Hampden, with £10 per ticket going to Unicef’s Ukraine appeal, and Hampden’s lights illuminating the centre circle in Ukrainian colours before kick-off.
So why are the SFA, instead of showing similar support to Palestine, now taking money from an institution they surely know to be complicit in Israel’s apartheid, occupation and genocide?
Legendary football manager Pep Guardiola recently denounced Israel’s genocide, saying: “Our children could be in Gaza and murdered just for being born there.”
He’s right. It’s a cosmic fluke that our children play football on the pitches of East Kilbride, Stranraer and Dingwall, not the pitches of Rafah and Jabalia or the beaches of Gaza. A cosmic fluke that during any given training session we need only worry about how much rain will fall from the sky, not how many bombs will rain down on us.
“Barclays Hampden” sends out a signal that Scottish football is open for business as usual with apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
It means that grassroots football in Scotland is now ultimately being funded by Israel’s wholesale destruction of not only the same grassroots football in Palestine, but Palestinian society itself.
The Scottish Parliament voted for a full state boycott of Israel in September, but as of yet there has been no meaningful action from the Scottish Government, and with our national stadium now named after a company complicit in genocide, we are shamefully becoming ever more complicit.
As a nation, we must rise now to show Barclays and Israel the red card.
Fraser Wilson is a freelance photographer who has attended protests in support of Palestine at Barclays offices and Hampden Park
Barclays provides answers on its website to a series of questions that have been raised about its connections to Israel and to defence companies.
It says it does not provide direct funding to the state of Israel and that while it provides a range of financial products and services to UK, US and European defence companies that supply Nato, it does not directly invest in these companies.
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