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Academy Award-winning Spanish actor Javier Bardem says it wouldn’t be wrong to say the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and Spain could be seen as a proxy match between Israel and Palestine.

The actor was speaking to journalist Mehdi Hasan early on Monday morning in the aftermath of Spain’s victory when the topic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his cabinet rooting for Argentina came up. Argentine President Javier Milei, meanwhile, was quoted as saying he was the “proudest Zionist president in the world”.

Hasan said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had, in contrast, been an outspoken critic of Israel and had led his country to join the genocide trial against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Bardem said the notion of the two competitors representing Israel and Palestine was right, but with the caveat that leaders don’t necessarily represent the will of their people.

“But it’s true that at this high level of encountering and conflict, it’s true that when a president is supporting so openly a person who is a war criminal like Netanyahu, then you want to really support the other team,” the actor said.

Bardem said Milei proudly supporting what the actor referred to as “a full genocide” and people like Netanyahu and Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir associating themselves with Argentina was “not fair” to the South American country.

“I don’t think it’s fair because there are many people from Argentina that really don’t support Milei, as many people in the States that don’t support [US President Donald] Trump.”

Both Bardem and Hasan shared a laugh over visuals from the trophy presentation, where Spanish players seemed to be awkwardly waiting for President Trump to leave the stage so they could get their team picture.

“He wanted to be in the picture, but it was great how these players who were looking at him like, ‘no, we have to make the picture without you.’ And as soon as you leave, we’re taking the picture. So he had to leave. And I was very proud of that as well,” the Spaniard said of his national team.

Bardem said he was surprised to see so many people around the world support his country, but could understand why.

“I am glad that the shift is happening in the people’s reaction towards, in this case, genocide and war crimes. And I think it’s because the actions that we’ve been witnessing through all these years towards the Palestinian population are so atrocious, they are so horrible to understand or make sense of, that anybody with minimal common sense understands that this is wrong.”

The actor said that just like Milei and Trump didn’t represent their nations as a whole, “extreme leaders like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir and all his cabinet are also not a representation of the Jewish community”.