Egypt had enough to argue about without inventing a conspiracy.
Its World Cup run ended in a 3-2 loss to Argentina after Egypt had led 2-0. A goal by Mostafa Ziko was ruled out after a video assistant referee (VAR) review, and Egypt complained about the officiating. Fans argued about the referee, the late collapse, and whether FIFA’s system had failed.
That is soccer.
Then the explanation moved somewhere else.
In parts of Arabic-language media and online discourse, Egypt had not simply lost to Argentina. It had lost to FIFA, Zionism, Israel, the referee, Lionel Messi, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a hidden system built to keep Egypt out.
One Egyptian commentator made the claim openly: Egypt had lost to “Zionism, the referee, FIFA, and Argentina.”
That was not match analysis. It was the oldest conspiracy theory in a new stadium – a new version of the mutating virus that is antisemitism.
The old claim has always found new hosts: banks, media, governments, wars. Now Jews, or “Zionists,” control the game. The institution changes. The accusation survives.
Egypt’s anger was not imaginary. Referees, VAR, FIFA, and Israel can be criticized. None of that is the problem.
The problem begins when criticism turns into a control story. A disputed call becomes Zionism. A referee becomes the system. A soccer loss becomes proof that Jews still run the world from behind the curtain.
That leap is visible in Arabic online reactions around the match. One post said “forces of evil and Zionism” had moved against Egypt. Another framed the game not as Egypt vs Argentina but as Egypt vs FIFA, the referee, Freemasonry, and Zionism, with a repeated caption saying the calls had rescued “Messi and his Zionist team.”
This is not a complaint about VAR. It is a claim of hidden agency.
The mutation was not confined to Arabic. Bassem Youssef, the Egyptian American comedian with a large English-speaking audience, did not enter this debate cold. He had already faced public accusations over comments about Jews and Israel, and had been challenged on air for floating an Israel-related conspiracy claim.
After Egypt-Argentina, he pushed the frame outward. One post said the match crisis taught children “what Zionism means,” and that this generation would witness the Zionists’ expulsion from Palestine and from North and South America, “just as they were expelled multiple times from Europe.”
Another circulated the claim that referee Francois Letexier was Jewish, even though X/Twitter’s community context said no credible record supported it.
That is the mechanism: a referee controversy becomes a lesson in Zionism. A claim about the referee’s Jewishness becomes relevant to the result. The expulsion of Jews from Europe becomes sports commentary. The language shifts. The structure stays the same.
Egypt-Argentina did not create that vocabulary. It activated it.
Dangerous shortcuts
The World Cup had already been pulled into the Gaza war and the politics around Israel. Arabic posts tied the tournament to Palestinian flags, Israeli flags, FIFA double standards, US President Donald Trump’s relationship with FIFA, and earlier VAR controversies.
A viral Al Jazeera Arabic post put it bluntly: the world was watching the World Cup while Gaza was bleeding. The tournament was bound to the war before a whistle blew in this match. Days later, Egypt-Argentina arrived inside that atmosphere.
That matters because the conspiracy did not have to begin with antisemitism. It could have begun with a real sense of injustice. The antisemitic turn came when the bad call, or the bad system, became evidence of Jewish control.
This is the old shortcut: pain gets a false author. Humiliation becomes evidence. The harder question – what actually happened – is replaced by the easier one: who secretly did this to us.
That shortcut is dangerous for Jews and Israel because they become the hidden hand behind every defeat. It is also dangerous for Arab societies because failure no longer has to be studied. If Zionism controls the referee, FIFA, Argentina, Messi, Milei, Netanyahu, and the world around them, then nothing has to be learned. The loss was not soccer. It was another scene in a permanent cosmic plot.
That is not resistance. It is a surrender to the oldest excuse.
This was not “the Arab world” speaking with one voice. Some Arabic coverage stayed inside the real question: refereeing, VAR, and whether Egypt had been treated fairly. The problem surfaced when soccer anger became a story of Jewish control.
That makes it harder to dismiss. The issue is not that every Arab fan believes Jews control soccer. The issue is that the script remains available and useful. It can be pulled into war, politics, media, and now sport. It starts with the answer already chosen.
The scapegoat arrives before the facts.
Egypt deserved a serious argument after Argentina. The players deserved one. VAR may deserve one, too.
A bad call can explain a match.
It should not become proof that Jews control the beautiful game.
Dr. Omar Mohammed, the historian known as “Mosul Eye,” is director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative and a Senior Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, and teaches at Sciences Po. A former UNESCO senior consultant, he holds a Ph.D. from EHESS in Paris, France.
Asher Stern is a researcher at the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University. Before joining the Program on Extremism, Stern served as project manager and researcher at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism, where he directed applied counterterrorism analysis focused on extremist networks, radicalization dynamics, and emerging threat ecosystems. He led structured analytical projects, developed threat assessments, mapped network relationships, and built open-source monitoring frameworks used to track organizational activity and mobilization indicators. Stern holds an MA in International Relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a BA in Government, Strategy, and Diplomacy from Reichman University.