Anwar El Ghazi has made himself heard after his dismissal from 1. FSV Mainz. The attacker was released by the German club earlier on Friday and has now responded to the news via his Instagram channel.
“Stand for what is right, even if it means standing alone,” is his message. By this, the ex-Ajax player is referring to the fact that his opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was ultimately the basis for his dismissal.
“The loss of my livelihood is nothing compared to the hell unleashed on the innocent and vulnerable in Gaza,” El Ghazi continued, concluding his message with a call for a stop to the killings.
El Ghazi was initially called out by Mainz for a post in which he used the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Mainz then published a statement in which El Ghazi would apologize, but the attacker did not agree and came up with a new statement on Instagram.
“I am against war and violence,” he wrote. “I am against the killing of all innocent civilians. I am against all forms of discrimination. I am against Islamophobia. I am against anti-Semitism. I am against genocide. I am against apartheid. I am against occupation. I am against oppression.”
“I have no regrets or remorse for my position and do not distance myself from what I have said and I stand, today and always until my last breath, for humanity and the people who are oppressed. I do not owe any special responsibility to any state.”
That Instagram post ultimately proved fatal for El Ghazi. The Dutchman’s contract, which continued until mid-2025, was torn up. Mainz is extra sensitive to these types of matters and is therefore taking tough action against El Ghazi.
This stems from the fact that one of the club’s founders, Eugen Salomon, is a Jewish German. He was murdered in Auschwitz during the Second World War. Mainz therefore handles his memory and the charged German history with care.