Politics
Why Bosnia’s fans also cheer for Palestine
BELGRADE, Serbia — The blue-clad throngs who arrive in Santa Clara, California, today for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s match against the United States will not only be rooting for a national team that has already advanced farther in a World Cup than ever before. They will also be cheering for Palestine.
That has been a staple of every stop made by Bosnian fans on their movements through North America, from a fan march in Toronto to the streets of Los Angeles before the Switzerland match to the stands in Seattle. It reflects a strong current of pro-Palestinian solidarity in the Muslim-majority Balkan nation, where many draw a direct line between their own war and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In 1990s, a coalition of U.S. and European powers, fresh off the internationalist euphoria that followed the end of the Cold War, were determined that the war crimes in Bosnia receive the highest and most professional response international justice could offer.
They set up the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity across the region were subjected to rigorous trials led by international prosecutors and judges.
This is how Bosnia spent a painstaking 25 years putting the perpetrators of its worst wartime crimes on trial, culminating in a genocide conviction for those responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, carried out over three days in early July 1995. It is the only European country since the Nuremberg trials to have pursued such action.
Bosnian diaspora communities — many traveling in large numbers to watch the matches in the U.S. — along with people back home, feel a strong connection to what they see as the plight of the Palestinians and the absence of international criminal prosecution for the crimes they believe Israel is committing in Gaza.
The issue is further inflamed by the fact that Bosnian Serb strongman Milorad Dodik — the single most divisive figure in the country and the most fervent denier of the Srebrenica genocide — has weaponized the legacy of the war to curry favor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Željka Cvijanović, a fellow member of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats now serving as the Serb representative to the country’s three-headed presidency, also visited Israel in late June.
Many of the other World Cup competitors whose fans most fervently embraced the Palestinian cause — including Jordanians who wore keffiyehs to their matches in Santa Clara — have been eliminated from the tournament.
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OAKLAND, California — Thousands of soccer fans from around the world will funnel around the windy San Francisco Bay area by train, bus, and light rail to watch the United States take on Bosnia and Herzegovina in an elimination game at Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium. But operators of the region’s interlocking mass transit systems are more likely to be concerned with the opinion of local riders than visiting ones.
In November, voters across San Francisco Bay Area counties will vote on a ballot measure that serves as something of an existential political referendum on the sometimes maligned but widely utilized public networks that knit together one of the United States’ most transit-dependent regions.
The measure would increase local sales-tax rates by up to a full percent to provide a stable funding source for BART, Muni, Caltrain and AC Transit, and the San Francisco Bay Ferry — all of which have faced lower ridership and declining fare revenues since the COVID-19 pandemic. Should it fail, transit agencies have warned of dramatic cuts to service that could lead to less ridership, even less fare revenue, and the end of the system altogether.
The Connect Bay Area campaign behind the ballot measure is already working overtime to convince voters that they do in fact hold a deep and abiding love for public buses, trains and boats, embarking on what local press has referred to as a “charm offensive,” through transit-sponsored speed dating, anime festivals, and even a 1980s prom-themed party at a train station east of San Francisco.
The campaign did not schedule the World Cup match but is hoping the high-profile encounter involving the U.S. national team will serve as a very public test of the systems’ function and ability to remind both regular and infrequent users of their value.
“It’s an opportunity to remind people of what public transit means on a large scale,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for the ballot-measure campaign funded largely by a coalition of business groups and labor unions. “You can’t welcome 100,000 people if you don’t have a way to get them around — these big, celebratory events just don’t happen if we don’t have public transit.”
LONDON — U.K. ambassadors from missions across the world have returned and are watching the England-Democratic Republic of Congo match with their London-based opposite numbers in the Gold Room of Lancaster House, the U.K. Foreign Office’s opulent mansion in Westminster. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is due to attend.
Britain’s ambassador to the DRC is watching the match alongside the Congolese ambassador to the U.K. They swapped jerseys from their two nations at the start.
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