Should the NFL Tolerate Support for Hamas?

Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair has gained a reputation for dirty hits on opposing players. In this season alone, he has been fined for punching a Chicago Bears running back, fined again for flagrantly hitting a Tennessee Titans player out of bounds, and, most notoriously, delivering a vicious blow to the head of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence. That last violation resulted in both a fine and a three-game suspension, a penalty the NFL rarely imposes.

Amidst all the public discussion of Al-Shaair’s hit on Lawrence, fans noticed some unusual writing on Al-Shaair’s cleats.

One of his shoes has the words “At least 41,788 Palestinians killed. 10,000+ estimated to be under the rubble. 96,794 wounded.” Those are the exaggerated and unverified claims made by Hamas about Gaza. The other side of the cleat has a verse from the Quran: “Surely to Allah we belong and to him we will all return.”

If the issue was just the casualty numbers, one might give Al-Shaair the benefit of the doubt. He could simply be naively parroting Hamas’s numbers, and not necessarily supporting the Hamas cause.

But there is a message on his second cleat, too: there he stitched the word “FREE,” with two of the letters in the colors of the PLO flag, and the other two mimicking a keffiyeh.

The choice of that slogan takes the matter beyond legitimate humanitarian concerns, and into the realm of pro-terrorist propaganda. The slogan “Free Palestine,” a euphemism for the destruction of Israel, has been a major feature of pro-Hamas rallies around the world in the past year. The keffiyeh has become a symbol of pro-Hamas sentiment. And the PLO flag stands for decades of Palestinian Arab terrorism, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Israeli Jews, nearly two hundred American citizens, and many others.

Al-Shaair’s cleats

There was a time when the NFL prohibited players from displaying political messages of any kind on their uniforms. But this year, the NFL launched a program called “My Cause My Cleats,” in which a player may raise funds for his favorite cause by advertising it on his shoes and then later auctioning them off. Among the most common causes players have selected, according to the NFL, are cancer research, women’s health, and helping victims of domestic violence.

However, the rules say that “social justice initiatives" also qualify, and perhaps that’s what NFL officials mistakenly think Al-Shaair’s slogans represent.

The charity Al-Shaair has selected is called the “Palestine Children’s Relief Fund” (PCRF). Despite its innocuous name, the PCRF is no ordinary charity. A detailed report by the organization NGO Monitor has documented the PCRF’s extensive connections to Hamas support groups.

Links to the PCRF have appeared on what the U.S. Justice Department describes as “unofficial web sites” of both Hamas and Hezbollah. The PCRF partners with an array of Hamas-associated entities, including: Islamic Relief Palestine, which Israel outlawed because it funnels money to Hamas; the Gaza Zakat Committee, which is managed by Hamas preacher Hazem Al-Sirraj; and American Muslims for Palestine and Australian Friends of Palestine, which have praised the October 7 massacres as “Palestinian resistance.”

PCRF founder and president Steven Sosebee last year spoke at an event of the Hamas-supporting Students for Justice in Palestine. Sosebee accused Israel of “genocide in Gaza” in October 2023, before Israeli troops even entered the territory. A recent PCRF event in Tampa featured Hatem Fariz, who pleaded guilty to assisting the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PCRF’s Gaza area manager and its chapters coordinator have publicly praised Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists. And there are many other examples of such extremist activity.

Athletes who speak out for good causes deserve our applause. The handful of American athletes who boycotted the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany—to protest the persecution of the Jews there—gave up their chance at the limelight in order to speak out against injustice.

Babe Ruth lent the stature of his name to a full-page newspaper ad in the New York Times in 1942 to denounce Hitler’s slaughter of European Jewry. Boxing legend Barney Ross campaigned for the rescue of Jews from Hitler and the creation of a Jewish state. Tennis star Arthur Ashe was a prominent voice against South African apartheid. Andy Roddick, the sixth-ranked tennis player in the world, refused to play in a tournament in the United Arab Emirates in 2009 after an Israeli-born player was prevented from participating.

What is admirable about such athletes, however, is not merely the fact that they spoke out, but the fact that they spoke out for a just cause. By contrast, Azeez Al-Shaair has chosen to align himself with an unjust one. In today’s world, “Free Palestine” and the PLO flag mean something—something violent and depraved. One would like to hope Al-Shaair is merely misinformed and willing to learn more—but so far, when challenged about his choices, he responded by calling his critics “racist and Islamophobic.” That’s not encouraging.

The NFL’s “My Cause My Cleat” program is a wonderful concept. It gives players a chance to show they understand that there is a real world out there, beyond the gridiron, and that they have a moral obligation to be part of it in a responsible way. Azeez Al-Shaair, however, appears to be exploiting the NFL’s good intentions—and it’s time for the NFL to blow the whistle on him, not only for his violent hit on Trevor Lawrence, but also for his apparent embrace of violence against innocent Israelis.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Jewish Journal.