July 31, 2024
Belfast (Special
to Informed Comment; Feature) – Nagham Abu Samrah was 24 years old Palestinian
karate champion from Gaza. She had the potential to participate in the 2024
Paris Olympic games. Unfortunately, an Israeli attack on her home killed her
sister and left her seriously wounded . Unconscionably, Israeli authorities
delayed her permission to leave Gaza for treatment, and when she finally
reached an Egyptian hospital, she died soon thereafter.
Sadly, Nagham
was not the only Palestinian athlete to have been killed by Israel. In its
letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) urging it to ban Israel
from participating in Paris Olympics, The Palestinian Olympic Committee pointed
out that since October 7, “Approximately 400 Palestinian athletes have been
killed, and the destruction of sports facilities exacerbates the plight of
athletes who are already under severe restrictions.”
Israel invaded
and occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, in violation of international law. No
international body had ever awarded Gaza to Israel. It was under the
stewardship of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and Egypt until a
Palestinian state could be established, as had been pledged by the British
Empire in the 1939 MacDonald White Paper. Israel “de-developed” the Gaza
economy, cutting it off from its traditional markets, and illegally implanted
Israeli settlers there. As Michael Jansen explained, the International Court of
Justice ruled in mid-July, 2024, that Israel’s presence in Gaza and the
Palestinian West Bank since 1967 has been illegal:
The Court contended that Israel has violated
international law by denying Palestinians their right to self-determination in
the territories occupied in 1967. The ICJ argued that Israel’s 57-year
occupation is permanent rather than “temporary . . .” The ICJ said Israel
violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, which regulates belligerent occupation,
by transferring its citizens into the occupied lands. Israel has illegally
extended Israeli law to the settlements and has imposed on Palestinians a
separate, discriminatory regime (akin to outlawed apartheid) and de facto
illegally annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Deliberate
attacks on Palestinian men and women athletes are not new. In 2014, two
Palestinian soccer players, Jawhar Nasser Jawhar and Adam Abd al-Raouf
Halabiya, were stopped by the Israeli army on their way home after training and
shot in the feet. Attack dogs, unleashed on them, mauled their limbs. They were
dragged and beaten until the attackers were sure they would never be able to
play soccer again.
In fact,
Israel’s war on Palestinian sports in general is much older than that. I
remember as a child during the first uprising between the years 1987 and 1993
which involved stone-throwing, the Israeli authorities suspended the soccer
league and, indeed, sport activities. Israel also used the local soccer stadium
in Nablus city as a military camp.
As we all know,
Palestinian athletes are not the only target of Israel. Well over 39,000
Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza alone and more than 90,000 have
been wounded since October 7, 2023. That this total war and the killing of tens
of thousands of civilians (as most of them have been) could be justified as
“fighting Hamas” is not plausible. It is a war on Gaza’s noncombatants,
including its athletes.
It is profoundly
troubling that Israel’s flag bearer in the Olympics, Peter Paltchik, is
reported to have signed bombs targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Peter,
who was born in Ukraine, is a settler colonialist who came from Europe to
colonize the land of Palestine while cheering the savagery inflicted on the
indigenous Palestinians by Israel.
Given all of the
above, the normal response from the International Olympic Committee would have
been to ban Israel from participating in the Olympics. Unfortunately, however,
the opposite happened. While Nagham and hundreds of other Palestinian athletes were
killed by Israel before being given the opportunity to participate in the
Olympics, Israel is there in Paris, since the IOC ignored calls to ban Israel
from participating. By doing that, the IOC let
itself down before anyone else.
This stance
shows that the IOC is unprincipled and morally bankrupt organization. Nearly
two years ago, it banned Russia and Belarus from participating in the Olympics
after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Russia, is banned by the European
Union also from participating in any continental or international competition
including the FIFA World Cup and all the European UEFA competitions. Israel is
not even in Europe, and is guilty of the same crimes of illegal invasion and
occupation as Russia. This situation makes the FIFA, IOC and UEFA complicit
with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Furthermore, the
IOC banned Apartheid South Africa from participating in the Olympics between
the years 1964 and 1992 due to its implementation of racist policies known as
apartheid. Ironically, the International Court of Justice has found that Israel
is guilty of the crime of Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories.Still, the IOC failed to treat Apartheid Israel in the same way it
treated Apartheid South Africa — which was an ally of apartheid Israel.
International sanctions on South Africa Apartheid regime were crucial to
bringing the era of racial segregation and discrimination to an end.
The IOC and
France missed an opportunity to pressure Israel to stop the bloodshed and to be
on the right side of history. They chose not to do so at the expense of their
reputation and credibility. They also ensured Israel’s status as a state that
can act with full impunity.
The appropriate
response for that would have been for the governments that declared their
support for the Palestinians to send a strong message to the IOC and France by
boycotting the Olympics or at least to show some other form of protest against
allowing Israel to participate in the Olympics. But unfortunately, politics and
foreign policies are more likely to be based on interests, not ethics. Some
governments will only pay lip service to the Palestinian cause as long as it
serves their interests — something that we the Palestinians seem to struggle to
understand. This collective failure of the international community to act will
only encourage Israel to continue uninterrupted with its daily murder of the
Palestinians, the bulk of whom are women and children.
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