Israel is committing genocide. Why is it still welcome in global sports?
The sports world claims to stand for peace and unity yet turns a blind eye as Israel kills athletes, journalists and civilians in Gaza.
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In January 2024, I published an op-ed for The Guardian making a case for sports sanctions against Israel. 20 months later, the sports world has done next to nothing to pressure Israel to end its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.
In fact, despite the case being made stronger by the Israeli government’s active starvation of more than two million people in Gaza, countries continue to welcome Israeli athletes to participate in sports events. For example, Canada is expected to host Israel in the upcoming Davis Cup tennis tournament in September. Tennis Canada, which oversees tennis events in the country, has responded to calls to ban the match by defending “the principle of sport to bring unity, separate from political conflicts.”
These canned statements about “unity” through sports have become a cliche within the sports world. FIFA and the Olympic Games propagate this notion that sports are a harbinger of peace, though they offer no legitimate proof to back up their romanticized claims—just naive hope. The truth is that sports actually reflect the worst of our world: the corruption, the injustice, and the lack of humanity.
Earlier this week, Jibril Ragoub, the president of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), called on FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to stop evading their responsibilities and take decisive decisions to stop Israeli attacks against sports in Palestine. Speaking at a press conference in the city of Al-Bireh Tuesday, Ragoub stated that “FIFA deals with a policy of double standards, which is unacceptable from an international institution that is supposed to protect its laws and regulations”. He
called on football’s international governing body to take an immediate decision against the Israeli Football Association, stressing that the silence on the restriction the freedom of movement of Palestinian players and the destruction of sports facilities amount to indirect collusion with the Israeli government.
According to the PFA, at least 774 athletes have been killed by Israeli forces since the onset of the war in October 2023, including at least 355 footballers. Earlier this month, Suleiman al-Obeid—known as the Palestinian Pele—was killed by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid. At least eight others were killed by the IDF this month.
The number of missing athletes has also reached 119, while more than 288 sports facilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were completely or partially destroyed. Some stadiums, such as Palestine Stadium and Yarmouk Stadium, were used as detention centers by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and were later turned into shelters for displaced people
recently published an excellent documentary highlighting the extent of the destruction of Gaza’s sporting infrastructure.And while there has been some pushback, including a German football club that canceled the signing of an Israeli striker over his appalling anti-Gaza social media posts and Norway’s decision to donate all proceeds from its upcoming World Cup qualifier against Israel to support relief efforts in Gaza, the vast majority of sports organizations continues to hide behind claims of “unity” and “peace,” as though hundreds of Palestinian athletes haven’t already been slaughtered.
Meanwhile, the dehumanization of Palestinians is not limited to international sports. When the IDF targeted a hospital in Gaza this week, bombing it twice and killing multiple journalists and aid workers, mainstream media—CNN, Associated Press, and Reuters among them—attempted to justify the attack by claiming the IDF was targeting a “Hamas camera”. Apparently, that is all it takes to explain away blatant war crimes.
In many cases, Israeli athletes themselves are implicated in grave violations against Palestinian civilians, with consistent estimates indicating that about 30 members of the Israeli delegation to the 2024 Paris Olympics served in the Israeli military or publicly supported the genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s Olympic Soldiers
At least 30 Israeli Olympians have publicly supported the Gaza war. Some even have served as IDF spokespeople, effectively as symbolizing Israel’s hard power on the world stage.
Though there is no official data on Israeli athletes who served in the army, Israel’s mandatory conscription makes it reasonable to assume that most people of active athletic age served as reserve soldiers and may have participated in crimes committed during the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Three Israeli judokas who medaled at the Paris Olympics last summer— Raz Hershko, Inbar Lanir and Peter Paltchik—have been vocal in their support of the war. Hershko and Lanir met with IDF soldiers stationed along the border with Gaza, while Paltchik signed his name on artillery shells aimed at civilians in Gaza. He posted a photo of the shells on social media, along with the caption “From me to you with pleasure.”
Some may argue against sanctions on the grounds that many affected athletes have no direct involvement in the war, though even that is difficult to prove given the lack of transparency on IDF recruitments. But the reality is that sports serve as a potent tool of soft power for the Israeli state. When Israel’s Olympic athletes returned from the Paris Games having secured seven medals, Netanyahu took full advantage of their Olympic success to stoke patriotism and boost national morale, all while his government continued its brutal campaign in Gaza.
"You are fantastic,” Netanyahu told Israel’s rhythmic gymnastics team, which won the country’s seventh medal in Paris. “You have brought pride and honor to the State of Israel on a scale that is hard to describe.”
Denying that platform — cutting off its means of reputation laundering and image management — is a straightforward way to pressure Israel to end its genocidal campaign. It is a strategy that was applied, successfully, to apartheid South Africa, and, most recently, Russia.
Israel, too, should be made a pariah. Until then, the silence of the global sports world will remain a blood-soaked badge of hypocrisy. So the next time someone parrots the line that sports are a beacon of peace, ask them if that slogan brought back any of the hundreds of Palestinian athletes slaughtered by Israel over the past 22 months—or if it just helped everyone sleep better at night.
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