Sus­pend­ed NFL Play­er Responds To Reports About ‘Free Pales­tine’ Cleats

Sus­pend­ed Hous­ton Tex­ans line­backer Azeez Al-Shaair respond­ed aggres­sive­ly to reports about his wear­ing cleats with var­i­ous pieces of Hamas pro­pa­gan­da on them when he did an ille­gal hit against Jack­sonville Jaguars star QB Trevor Lawrence.

“IF YOU WANT ME TO BE YOUR VILLAIN, I’LL BE YOUR VILLAIN! SEE YOU SOON…” the Tex­ans player’s X post on Wednes­day read.

The post includ­ed four pic­tures, one of which includ­ed him wear­ing the shoes with the mes­sage pro­claim­ing “Free Pales­tine” with the word “FREE” writ­ten on one side of the cleats in the col­ors of the Pales­tin­ian flag. The oth­er cleat con­tained a quote from the Quran and a mes­sage claim­ing, “at least 41,788 Pales­tini­ans killed” — a sta­tis­tic tak­en direct­ly from the Hamas-con­trolled Gaza Health Min­istry, the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con report­ed.

Anoth­er pic­ture showed a screen­shot of the Jok­er from the 2019 “Jok­er” movie, and in the final pho­to, a mes­sage that read, “There is a beau­ty being reject­ed, mis­un­der­stood, unseen, and unpro­tect­ed by peo­ple. It teach­es you to rely on Allah for every­thing.”

The cleats are part of the league’s “My Cause My Cleats” cam­paign, in which play­ers can raise mon­ey for 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 Israel on Octo­ber 7 that left 1,200 Israelis dead, thou­sands more wound­ed, and hun­dreds kid­napped and held hostage.

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

The post also fol­lowed the deci­sion by the league to uphold the three-game sus­pen­sion it lev­eled against Al-Shaair after he was eject­ed from the game on Sun­day fol­low­ing the hit on the quar­ter­back that left Lawrence with a con­cus­sion, CBS report­ed.

The NFL’s vice pres­i­dent of pol­i­cy and rules admin­is­tra­tion, Jon Run­yan, pre­vi­ous­ly said 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 also accused crit­ics of racism and Islam­o­pho­bia.

Relat­ed: Sus­pend­ed Tex­ans Line­backer Wears Cleats Fea­tur­ing Hamas Pro­pa­gan­da