Eighty-six years before the Iranian women’s team, footballers from the Middle East sought asylum in Australia

March 10, 2026 — 4:45pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Save this article for later

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.

Footballers from the Middle East, finding themselves in peril, first sought and gained asylum in Australia more than 85 years before members of the Iranian women’s soccer team did the same thing this week.

In 1939, almost on the eve of World War II, a soccer team from the British Mandate of Palestine toured Australia.

Though the tour was billed as Palestine versus Australia, all the players were Jewish, from the Maccabi Tel Aviv team: Israel did not exist for another nine years.

World War II was only two months away, and extreme repression and violence against Jews was at its height in Nazi Germany. Jews throughout Europe and the Middle East feared what would come next.

And so, when the tour of Australia wound up in July 1939, six members of the team from Mandatory Palestine sought to stay in Australia, according to historians Roy Hay and Bill Murray, quoted in 100 years of the Socceroos: A team indivisible from Australian society,........

© WA Today