Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

NFL player fined for wearing ‘Stop the genocide’ eye black

Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair again wore the eye black pregame after being fined for the message.

Azeez Al-Shaair of the Houston Texans looks on from the sideline during the national anthem before an NFL wild card playoff football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium in Western Pennsylvania on Jan. 12, 2026. Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images.
Azeez Al-Shaair of the Houston Texans looks on from the sideline during the national anthem before an NFL wild card playoff football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium in Western Pennsylvania on Jan. 12, 2026. Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images.

National Football League linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wore eye black reading “Stop the Genocide” on Sunday, despite being fined for the anti-Israel message a week earlier.

Al-Shaair was fined $11,593 for displaying the same message during a pregame team huddle ahead of a wild-card playoff showdown against Pittsburgh on Jan. 12, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The Houston Texans advanced to the divisional round with a 30-6 win.

(On March 15, 2024, Al-Shaair signed a three-year, $34 million contract with the Texans.)

In Sunday’s game, which the Texans lost to the New England Patriots 28-16, Al-Shaair could again be seen wearing the eye black while giving a pregame pep talk to his teammates, but not on the field.

Jerusalem has denied accusations of genocide following Hamas’s October 2023 attack, with officials calling such claims an antisemitic blood libel.

Al-Shaair, who is Muslim, has previously used the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program to highlight Palestinian causes.

An investigation into a swastika drawn by a teen in a Syosset high school bathroom led police to discover chemicals and explosive materials purchased by his father.
The 18 year old allegedly worked with two other unknown individuals, who have not yet been apprehended.
The newly created role at a time of global international turbulence seeks to buttress Israel’s relations with the Christian world.
Elana Stern, of the firm Ropes and Gray, told JNS that “no student and no family should have to experience what Eden and Montana Horwitz have had to experience.”
Roy Altman sees his work through the Jewish prism of judges who are “of the people, to understand the community in which they live, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations.”
Jon Husted’s press secretary said he joined the task force because of “violence against Jewish communities on the rise.”