Former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, one of the most prominent and decorated figures in global sports, has significantly escalated his political offensive against the State of Israel, appearing as the primary headliner in an official promotional campaign endorsing the European conference of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The conference, organized to coordinate international economic, academic, and cultural boycotts against the Jewish state, is scheduled for Barcelona between November 18 and November 20. In the newly revealed video, designed as the official promotional release for the boycott summit, Guardiola echoed anti-Israel propaganda themes, accusing Israel of systematic crimes and drawing false parallels to South Africa: “Twenty-one years ago, inspired by the long struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a ‘Palestinian’ call birthed a global solidarity movement—that is how the BDS movement was born,” Guardiola told the camera. “An initiative calling for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against apartheid, occupation, and genocide, and against every act of complicity. These have been 21 years of defying the conspiracy of silence.”
Guardiola further appealed for mass street mobilization to support the anti-Israel summit: “No genocide ever stopped on its own, and peace never came on its own. Because if today is always tomorrow, the next chapter begins now and we must write it together. From South Africa to ‘Palestine’, we know that complicity ends when the silence cracks. We must meet in Barcelona this November for the future of ‘Palestine’—which is the future of our shared humanity.”
The event’s lineup features prominent figures known for promoting extreme anti-Israel narratives and blood libels. Among those headlining alongside Guardiola are Omar Barghouti, the founder of the BDS movement who has openly rejected Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland; Francesca Albanese, the controversial UN Special Rapporteur on the ‘Palestinian’ territories with a long record of antisemitic rhetoric; and Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s former foreign minister who spearheaded the politicized legal charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
The overt endorsement by an elite global sporting figure comes amid an unprecedented wave of antisemitism across Europe. At the same time, Israeli soldiers remain engaged in multi-front combat against Iranian-backed terror organizations. By actively deploying his platform and celebrity to legitimize the BDS apparatus, Guardiola has aligned himself directly with networks committed to the economic strangulation and delegitimization of the State of Israel. At the same time, international sports governing bodies remain silent in the face of his political incitement.