LONDON — Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair took the field at Wembley Stadium on Sunday with the name of Maryam Ghanem on his eyeblack, a Gaza City girl whose mother was killed in an Israeli air strike four days earlier. Al Jazeera put her age at two and a half.
The Texans beat the Jaguars 34-31 on a field goal as time expired. The name on Al-Shaair’s face was the other story, and Al Jazeera counted it as the fifth consecutive week he has honored a Palestinian child.
Reem Asaad Awad, 33, Maryam’s mother, was killed at about 4am on Wednesday when a strike hit an apartment block in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera, which cited Anadolu and a source at Al-Shifa hospital. Maryam was rescued from the fire that followed. Israel said it was investigating and claimed it had targeted a member of Hamas, without providing evidence. TEH relied on Al Jazeera for these details and could not verify them independently.
Al-Shaair began the season on September 13 with the name of Hind Rajab, then Wafaa Akila, the eight-year-old killed with her father in a Gaza City strike that pushed the Gaza ceasefire death toll past 1,340, according to the territory’s health ministry, as TEH reported. Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday that the toll since the truce meant to halt the genocide began last October stood at 1,501. The counts come from different dates and sources.
The Week 1 fine is the only eyeblack penalty TEH found this season, and its size depends on who is counting: $11,491 in Al Jazeera, $11,492 in Fox News’s OutKick, and $11,941 in NBC Sports, which cited The Athletic. The bigger threat came a week later, when an NFL source told OutKick an official ordered him to remove Akila’s name or leave the game. He removed it, and Yahoo Sports, citing The Athletic, said he was not fined that week.
Al-Shaair calls the fines beside the point. “Is a life worth $11,000? No, I think it’s priceless,” he told reporters, Al Jazeera reported. OutKick noted that he signed a three-year, $54 million extension in April. The rulebook, as Yahoo Sports quoted it, says a player who does not correct a violation “will not be permitted to enter the game.”
Al Jazeera ties the fines to another dispute over Gaza and sport: Patriots owner Robert Kraft confirmed he pressured Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from the tour. Every opening act on Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour quit over that decision, as TEH reported.
TEH found no report on Monday of a fine for the Maryam Ghanem tribute. It also could not establish what Al-Shaair wore in every game between Indianapolis and London: the Texans have played six games, and Al Jazeera’s count is five. Whether the league fines him again, or finally keeps him off the field, is still unanswered.
