2014 image of Chilean football team shared as recent

Context

A claim has gone viral, with posts reaching over a million views on X (formerly Twitter), stating that Chilean football club Palestino has replaced the number 1 on their shirts with a map of Palestine according to its border prior to the establishment of the state of Israel.

The posts include an image as alleged proof, showing several football players, two of whom have their backs to the camera, with squad numbers 11 and 14. However, the number “1” has been replaced with a map of Palestine with its pre-1947 borders.

The claim has been shared on X, and Facebook without clarifying that the image is from 2014. Some have shared the image in the context of the current Olympic games with hashtags such as "Paris 2024."

However, the claim is misleading. The image is from 2014 when the Chilean football Club Palestino presented its new football kit, which they were later banned from using and fined for. Palestino is one of many football clubs in Chile and should not be confused with the national team. Chile is not competing in football in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In fact

Using a reverse image search, we found that the images used in the viral posts were from 2014, when the Chilean first division football club Palestino launched their new football kits with the 1s changed to a map of Palestine with the pre-1947 borders. The Chilean Football Federation banned the team from using the jerseys and ordered them to be re-designed. They stated in their decision that: “The association is removed from religious and political activities, in general, and anything else which does not have a direct relation to its objectives and to sport… Consequently, the association prohibits any form of political, religious, sexual, ethnic or racial discrimination,” according to Reuters. 

The decision came following a complaint from Patrick Kiblisky, who owns Nublense, another Chilean first-division football club, stating that football should not be involved with religion or politics. Several Jewish organizations in Chile also complained, noting that it denied the existence of Israel since it used the pre-1947 borders. 

Palestino responded to the ban, saying, “For us, free Palestine will always be the historical Palestine, nothing less.”

Fact-checking organization Misbar has also fact-checked the claim, reaching the same conclusion. 

A Palestinian football team in Chile? 

Initially founded in 1916 in Santiago, Chile, Club Deportivo Palestino, or Palestino, has been a professional football club since 1952 and plays in Chile's top football league, the Primera División de Chile. The club was founded by the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, which has the largest population of Palestinians outside the Middle East, numbering almost 500,000 people. The first wave of Palestinian immigrants came in 1850 following the Crimean War, then after the before and during the First World War, and finally after the Nakba in 1948. 

The Palestinian diaspora has shaped Chilean policy towards Palestine. In 1947, Chile abstained from voting in the United Nations General Assembly’s vote to partition Palestine and recognized Palestine as a state in 2011. Palestino has also built relationships with Palestinian politicians and football fans over the years, receiving letters of support from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Palestinian President Yassir Arafat. In 2019 the club installed TV screens in Ramallah so local Palestinians could watch two games against Argentinian Club Atlético River Plate. 

Verdict

The image is from 2014 and is unrelated to the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024. In 2014, Palestino was fined and had to re-design its football jerseys. Palestino should not be confused with Chile’s national football team either, as they play in their first division. Furthermore, Chile is not competing in football in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Due to this, we have marked this claim as misleading.