Lionel Messi has many flaws. Being a Zionist is not one of them

During the 2026 World Cup, Lionel Messi found himself at the centre of a controversy that had little to do with football. Following Argentina’s victory over Algeria, an Algerian television commentator claimed that Messi was protected by a “Jewish lobby,” linking the alleged favouritism toward the Argentine captain to Algeria’s positions on Palestine and Western Sahara.

Meanwhile, some pro-Palestinian social media accounts began presenting support for Argentina’s opponents as an anti-Zionist position. The controversy became significant enough for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to ask explicitly: “Is Lionel Messi a Zionist?”

The article compiled a series of episodes connecting Messi with Israel and Jewish organisations over more than a decade. Yet, remarkably, it did not identify a single statement in which Messi described himself as a Zionist, endorsed Zionism, supported an Israeli government, or articulated a political position against Palestinian rights. That absence matters.

Abundant evidence shows that Messi has visited Israel, worked with Israeli companies, met Israeli leaders, and played football there. There is also evidence that he has visited Palestine, met Palestinian leaders, participated in initiatives involving Palestinian children and publicly expressed concern about children killed and injured in Gaza.

What is missing is evidence that he is a Zionist. The distinction matters because Messi’s case illustrates something larger than the politics of one football player: how political identities are increasingly manufactured for global celebrities through selective images, commercial associations, social media repetition, and sometimes straightforward misinformation.

The photograph that refuses to disappear

Perhaps the most persistent piece of supposed evidence is a photograph from August 2013 showing Messi wearing a kippah and placing a note in Jerusalem’s Western Wall. The photograph is authentic, but its political interpretation is considerably more problematic.

Messi did not travel to Jerusalem independently or as part of an Israeli initiative. He was there with the entire FC Barcelona squad on what the club itself called a “Peace Tour”, explicitly designed to promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

The first day of the tour was spent in Palestine. Barcelona’s players visited Bethlehem, met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and held a football clinic near Hebron attended by thousands of Palestinians.

On the second day, the delegation crossed into Israel, visited the Western Wall and met President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The tour ended with Israeli and Palestinian children participating together in a football clinic in Tel Aviv.

Messi therefore met both Abbas and Netanyahu. He interacted with Palestinian children as well as Israeli children. Yet one photograph survived politically: Messi at the Western Wall.

Removed from the Palestinian half of the trip, the image gradually became evidence of something the visit itself was never intended to represent: Messi’s supposed ideological identification with Israel.

The Gaza statement that is often forgotten

Messi has rarely spoken publicly about international politics. That makes one intervention particularly relevant. During Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, Messi posted an image of a wounded Palestinian child in Gaza on his Facebook page. Writing as a father and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, in Arabic and English, he was “terribly saddened” by the images coming from the conflict and called for children to be protected.

It would be an exaggeration to describe the statement as explicitly pro-Palestinian. Messi did not assign political responsibility for the war, condemn Israel or endorse Palestinian political demands. His language was deliberately humanitarian. But it is equally difficult to reconcile the episode with Messi's portrayal as an outspoken supporter of Israel.

The most substantial public statement he appears to have made on Israel-Palestine was an appeal to stop violence accompanied by the image of an injured Palestinian child.

Ironically, misinformation soon pushed Messi in both directions.

During the same 2014 Gaza war, reports circulated that he had donated €1 million to Israel. The story was false. It appears to have originated with an Algerian parody website before being reproduced as fact by media elsewhere.

Four years later, the opposite fabrication spread. After Argentina cancelled a friendly against Israel, Messi was widely quoted as supposedly saying that, as a UNICEF ambassador, he could not play against people who killed Palestinian children.

AFP found no evidence that Messi ever made the statement. The real Messi was apparently insufficient for both narratives.

The BDS paradox

The 2018 episode is particularly revealing in light of today’s accusations. Argentina was scheduled to play Israel shortly before the World Cup. The game eventually became politically controversial after it was moved to Jerusalem. Palestinian organisations and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement launched an international campaign urging Argentina and Messi personally not to participate. The campaign was intense.

Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub called on fans to target Messi’s image if he played, rhetoric for which FIFA later sanctioned him. Other Palestinian voices appealed directly to Messi’s popularity in Gaza. Argentina eventually cancelled the game.

Whatever combination of political pressure, security concerns and player unease produced that decision, BDS regarded it as a victory. Its own statement was unambiguous: “Palestinians Thank Argentina and Lionel Messi for Cancelling ‘Friendly’ with Israel.”

The movement specifically recalled that Palestinian activists had urged Messi to withdraw and celebrated the cancellation as preventing the Israeli government from politically exploiting the match.

That creates an uncomfortable contradiction. In 2018, a central organisation of the BDS movement publicly thanked Messi for the cancellation of a politically controversial match in Jerusalem. Eight years later, some pro-Palestinian voices cite Messi’s alleged Zionism as a reason to oppose Argentina. Both versions cannot easily coexist.

There is, however, an important qualification. In 2019, Argentina played Uruguay in Tel Aviv despite another boycott campaign, and Messi participated and scored. He also subsequently played in Israel with Paris Saint-Germain. Messi therefore cannot plausibly be portrayed as someone who adopted the Palestinian cultural boycott of Israel.

Nevertheless, refusing to boycott Israel and identifying ideologically as a Zionist are also not the same thing.

Israeli business ties

A credible examination of the accusation must acknowledge what is probably the strongest evidence used by those who describe Messi as particularly close to Israel: his commercial relationships. In 2017, Messi briefly served as a global ambassador for Sirin Labs, an Israeli-founded technology company with research and development operations in Tel Aviv.

Three years later, he entered into a much more visible partnership with OrCam Technologies, a Jerusalem-based Israeli company producing artificial intelligence devices for blind and visually impaired people. Messi became a global ambassador for the company in a three-year arrangement that reportedly has been renewed at least until 2023.

These are real connections and should not be hidden or minimised. But what do they establish? They establish that Messi accepted commercial partnerships with Israeli technology companies. In OrCam’s case, his public explanation focused specifically on improving the lives of blind and visually impaired people.

There is no accompanying evidence that either partnership involved an endorsement of Zionism, Israeli territorial policies, the occupation or any Israeli government. If commercial interaction with an Israeli company is sufficient evidence to classify someone as a Zionist, the category becomes so expansive that it loses much of its analytical meaning.

When silence becomes a political position

The controversy became even more revealing after 7 October 2023. Unlike many global celebrities, Messi did not publicly align himself with either side of the war. That vacuum was quickly filled by others. Images circulated purporting to show him holding an Israeli flag. Other images showed him holding a Palestinian flag. Both were fake.

In fact, AFP traced the photographs to unrelated advertising images showing Messi holding promotional material for a sports memorabilia company. Someone digitally replaced the original objects with the respective flags.

One digital community needed a pro-Israel Messi. Another needed a pro-Palestinian Messi. Both manufactured him. This may ultimately tell us more about the controversy than any photograph at the Western Wall.

None of this proves what Lionel Messi privately believes about Israel, Palestine or Zionism. That is precisely the point. Political identities normally require some evidence of political identification: a statement, endorsement, affiliation, campaign or sustained pattern of political advocacy. In Messi’s case, no comparable evidence appears to exist.

What exists instead is a collection of encounters that have progressively been transformed into an ideology. He visited the Western Wall. But he visited Bethlehem on the same tour. He met Netanyahu. But he met Mahmoud Abbas. He has played football in Israel. But his national team also cancelled one of the most politically controversial matches it was scheduled to play there. He worked with Israeli companies. But commercial endorsement is not political affiliation. He supported Jewish causes in Argentina, including remembrance of the victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing. But solidarity with Jewish Argentinean victims of terrorism is not Zionism.

And when he actually spoke about Gaza, he showed an injured Palestinian child and asked that children be protected.

None of this makes Messi a Palestinian activist either. There is no evidence for that claim. The more defensible conclusion is considerably simpler: Lionel Messi has spent most of his public life refusing the political identities that others repeatedly attempt to assign to him.

Perhaps that is why the argument over his supposed Zionism is so revealing. In an increasingly polarised environment, neutrality itself becomes suspicious. Visiting Israel means endorsing Israel. Meeting a Jewish organisation becomes evidence of Zionism. Refusing to boycott becomes political allegiance. A photograph becomes an ideology. And when the available evidence does not provide the desired political Messi, social media simply creates one, sometimes literally, by photoshopping a flag into his hands.

Messi may be many things. On the publicly available evidence, there is little basis for confidently claiming that “Zionist” is one of them. The persistence of the label tells us far more about the politics surrounding him than it does about Lionel Messi himself.

Dr. Luciano Zaccara is Principal Researcher at New Ground Research, Qatar. Also, a Visiting Associate Professor at the Georgetown University in Qatar, and Director of the Observatory on Politics and Elections in the Arab and Muslim World, Spain.

Follow Luciano on X: @LucianoZaccara

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