Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola addressed the war in Gaza during a speech Monday after receiving an honorary degree from the University of Manchester.
While stressing that his remarks were not political or ideological, the Spanish coach did not mention the victims of Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terror attack or the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
“It’s painful to see what’s happening in Gaza—it hurts my whole body,” Guardiola said. “Let me be clear: this is not about ideology, or about whether I’m right or wrong. It’s about love for life, about caring for what happens to your neighbor. Maybe we’re seeing four-year-old children killed by a bomb, or in a hospital that no longer functions, and we tell ourselves it’s not our concern. But be careful—the next four- or five-year-olds could be ours.”
The omission of any reference to the October attack, in which Hamas-led terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted more than 240 others, drew criticism online. Many pointed to the absence as a glaring oversight, especially amid growing calls for moral clarity from public figures.
Guardiola continued, “I’m sorry, but when I think about what’s happening to the little children in Gaza, I see my own children—and I’m scared. Maybe it feels far away from where we live, and you ask yourselves, ‘What can we do?’ There’s a story about a forest on fire, and all the animals flee—except for one small bird. It flies again and again to the sea, returning each time with a drop of water in its beak. The snake mocks her, asking why she bothers, saying she’ll never put out the fire. She replies, ‘I’m doing my part.’”
He concluded, “The bird knew she couldn’t put out the fire alone, but chose to act anyway. In a world that tries to convince us we’re too small to make a difference, that story shows that the power isn’t in the numbers—it’s in the decision to refuse to stay silent.”
