Sus­pend­ed Tex­ans Line­backer Wears Cleats Fea­tur­ing Hamas Pro­pa­gan­da

Sus­pend­ed Hous­ton Tex­ans line­backer Azeez Al-Shaair wore cleats with var­i­ous pieces of Hamas pro­pa­gan­da on them when he launched into the ille­gal hit that took out Jack­sonville Jaguars star QB Trevor Lawrence.

Dur­ing Sunday’s game against the Jaguars, the Tex­ans play­er was wear­ing shoes with a mes­sage pro­claim­ing “Free Pales­tine,” the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con report­ed. The mes­sage “FREE” was writ­ten on one side of the cleats in the col­ors of the Pales­tin­ian flag. His shoes also con­tained a quote from the Quran and a mes­sage that stat­ed “at least 41,788 Pales­tini­ans killed,” a sta­tis­tic tak­en direct­ly from the Hamas-con­trolled Gaza Health Min­istry, the Bea­con not­ed.

The cleats are part of the league’s “My Cause My Cleats” cam­paign, in which play­ers can raise mon­ey for their var­i­ous caus­es. In Al-Shaair’s case, the mon­ey raised would go to the Pales­tine Children’s Relief Fund, accord­ing to the Hous­ton Tex­ans web­site. He began wear­ing the cleats last year, fol­low­ing the hor­rif­ic Hamas attack on Octo­ber 7 that left 1,200 Israelis killed.

The relief fund’s part­ner­ships with Hamas-linked groups has also brought increased scruti­ny, accord­ing to NGO Mon­i­tor.

Fol­low­ing the hit on Sun­day, Al-Shaair was eject­ed from the game — and the quar­ter­back was left lying on the ground with a con­cus­sion. The hit result­ed in a crazy on-field fight between sev­er­al play­ers on both teams and the imme­di­ate ejec­tion of the Tex­ans play­er. The league fol­lowed up by giv­ing Al-Shaair a three-game sus­pen­sion.

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The NFL’s vice pres­i­dent of pol­i­cy and rules admin­is­tra­tion, Jon Run­yan, announced that the league had deemed the hit “unac­cept­able” and that the Tex­ans player’s “con­tin­ued dis­re­gard” for rules gov­ern­ing play­er safe­ty “will not be tol­er­at­ed,” ESPN report­ed.

“You were involved in a play that the [NFL] con­sid­ers unac­cept­able and a seri­ous vio­la­tion of the play­ing rules,” Run­yan wrote. “Video shows you strik­ing the head/neck area of Jaguars’ quar­ter­back Trevor Lawrence after he clear­ly goes down in a feet-first slide. … You led with your fore­arm and hel­met and deliv­ered a force­ful blow to the head/neck area of your oppo­nent when you had time and space to avoid such con­tact.”

The Tex­ans play­er lat­er apol­o­gized to Lawrence but hit back at crit­ics, accus­ing them of racism and Islam­o­pho­bia.

“To the rest of the peo­ple who I’ve been called every sin­gle name in the book from reporters with their hands ready for a sto­ry to find their vil­lain, to racist and Islam­o­pho­bic fans and peo­ple, you don’t know my heart nor my char­ac­ter which I don’t need to prove to any of you,”  Al-Shaair wrote, while he cap­tioned his mes­sage “All Praise to Allah.”