{"id":113654,"date":"2026-05-14T13:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113654\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T13:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:58:14","slug":"israeli-minister-criticizes-barcelona-star-lamine-yamal-for-waving-palestinian-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113654\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli minister criticizes Barcelona star Lamine Yamal for waving Palestinian flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Israel\u2019s defense minister has criticized Barcelona\u2019s teenage star Lamine Yamal for his waving of a Palestinian flag<\/a> during celebrations of the Spanish league title win, saying the act \u201cincites hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLamine Yamal chose to incite hate against Israel while our soldiers combat the terrorist organization Hamas, an organization that massacred, raped and burned Jewish children, women and the elderly on Oct. 7, (2023)\u201d minister Israel Katz wrote on X on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old Yamal waved a large Palestinian flag from an open-top bus during a victory parade by Barcelona\u2019s team through the city on Monday. The parade drew some 750,000 people to celebrate the league title clinched the previous day, local authorities said.<\/p>\n

Yamal, who is Muslim<\/a>, posted pictures of him holding the flag on his Instagram account.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s government and a large part of its population have been highly critical of Israel\u2019s military operations that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in response to the 2023 Hamas surprise attack. <\/p>\n

There has been a global backlash against Israel<\/a> over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza, which has spread to sport and culture. Protests have been seen in soccer, cycling and basketball. Last year\u2019s Spanish Vuelta was repeatedly disrupted<\/a> by protesters angry with the participation of an Israeli-backed cycling team.<\/p>\n

Spain is also one of five countries boycotting this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest to protest Israel\u2019s inclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yamal is set to star for Spain at next month\u2019s World Cup<\/a> to be played in North America.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Israel\u2019s defense minister has criticized Barcelona\u2019s teenage star Lamine Yamal for his waving of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[719,2371,32675,1411,37,1494,2576,1218,549],"class_list":{"0":"post-113654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-2024-2026-mideast-wars","10":"tag-barcelona","11":"tag-hamas","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","14":"tag-soccer","15":"tag-spain","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116573287357266110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}