Call to ban apartheid Israel
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has written to the New Zealand Olympic Committee urging it to join the international campaign for apartheid Israel to be banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics (26 July to 11 August)
Horrendous Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza and the apartheid system which discriminates against every Palestinian who lives “between the river and the sea” is behind the call which comes as a demand from more than 300 Palestinian sports clubs and civil society organizations.
There is no place for genocide or apartheid in the Olympics.
Suspension and expulsion of apartheid South Africa from the Olympic movement
There is plenty of precedent for a country to be expelled from the Olympic Games with the most relevant being the suspension of apartheid South Africa from participation in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and its expulsion from the IOC altogether in 1970.
Israel similarly runs an apartheid system against Palestinians which prevents the large majority of Palestinians, who live under Israeli military occupation in the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem, from fair and reasonable opportunities to participate in international sport.
Just to be clear, Israel’s apartheid system has been described in detail in investigations by the largest and most credible international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Within Israel itself the largest and most respected human rights organisation, B’Tselem, has described Israel as A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.
Suspension of Israel must follow suspension of Russia from the Paris Olympics
On July 13, 2023, the IOC announced Russia would not receive a formal invitation to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris because of the country’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Israel is guilty of much greater destruction and slaughter in its genocidal rampage through Gaza.
Just as Russia has been barred from Paris – Israel must be barred also. Basic fairness and justice demand it.
Israeli war crimes in Gaza
Since October 2023, Israel has been conducting a war of genocidal proportions against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. More than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed – the majority being women and children – while over 70,000 have been seriously injured. Meanwhile Israel is denying Palestinians in Gaza essential and desperately needed humanitarian aid and has used “starvation as a weapon of war.”
On 26 January the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared there is a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Since then the situation has worsened with at least 1,800 more Palestinians killed and the Israeli military choking off food supplies and famine breaking out across Gaza.
Israel targets Palestinian sports and sportspeople
Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian sports and blatantly violates the right of Palestinians to practice sports. As well as the apartheid laws which make it extremely difficult for Palestinians to take part in sport under the Israeli occupation, Israeli troops have casualised the killing and maiming of Palestinian sportspeople.
Israeli occupation forces have shot at Palestinian athletes to deliberately kill or maim them. In Gaza, Israel has killed the Palestinian Olympic football coach, Hani Al Masdar, and destroyed the office of the Palestinian Olympic Committee.
Israeli settlement-based sports clubs and stadiums are built on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law. Israel has bombedPalestinian stadiums, raided sports clubs, obstructed matches, confiscated sports equipment, and denied Palestinian athletes their right to freedom of movement.
Israel could not be more in contrast with the spirit and values espoused by the Olympic movement.
Our New Zealand Olympic Committee has a dreadful history of support for apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the reason a motion was moved to expel New Zealand from the 1976 Montreal Olympics. The motion failed but as a result 29 African and Caribbean countries boycotted the Montreal games because New Zealand was taking part.
It’s time to make amends. The New Zealand Olympic Committee must to vote for apartheid Israel to be banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics.
While we are onto the Olympics didn’t the Palestinians attend in ’72?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre
James Brown – Yes, and the more you look into it…the more shameful those actions were against Israel, and the World.
100% The Israehellis are destroying the Palestinians out of a genocide manual the Nazis would have been proud of. E.G. The Warsaw Ghetto
Brutal Facts About the Warsaw Uprising https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjixSqDu1uk
Israeli Airstrike Traps 6-Year-Old Girl Under Rubble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPZ9yvZiro
“I had to carry a decapitated body”: Gazan child after fresh Israeli strike on Jabalia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LVb9eomksY
jay11 – True, and yet Hamas continues to sacrifice Gazans by not getting out of Gaza.
John – How about we ban Iran and Qatar? Why? They both arm Hamas…what about that John?
Or North Korea.
Yes I second that nathan.
The US arms Israel, when you want to ban them I will believe you are serious about banning Iran & Qatar. The good book says all have sinned & all countries have problems of some sort.
What ‘good book’ Bonnie?….Israel have the Talmud and the other countries you mention have the koran.
Your ‘good book’ is immaterial and useless.
So tell me a country that doesn’t have problems then.
that’s like saying that the Jewish resistance to extermination in the Warsaw Ghetto shouldn’t have been armed against the full might of the Nazi war machine: Tanks, Dive bombers, flame throwers, machine guns and trained assault troops. Not to mention imposed starvation and execution on sight if you surrendered. The Israehellis have a continuous supply of bombs and weapons flying into Teladeath day after day.
The equivalent of two Hiroshimas have been dropped on Gaza. The place looks worse than even Dresden did after the WW11 firebombing. But Hamas shouldn’t be armed to die a soldier’s death?
Why ban human countries that oppose you people raping and killing Palestinian kids?
Very true. As those who grew up under apartheid like Zwelivelile Mandela acknowledge, the zionist entity, even prior to the recent escalation in the tempo of the genocide that it has been committing against the legitimate population of Palestine since the zionists originally invaded, is far worse than apartheid South Africa ever was. Given the zionist rejection of all human morality, they must be excluded from all international organizations.
What do you think about countries that execute their citizens for homosexual acts? Seems there’s some human morality lacking there.
Well said GW.
You don’t get any choice in racial discrimination, depending on who you talk to the amount of choice you get regarding homosexual acts varies however they are separate issues & people are capable of avoiding the act that leads to prosecution while it is physically impossible to change your race.
Wow that’s some answer. So you’d basically consider homosexuality as some type of perversion that people should just stop or suffer the consequences. Perhaps they can pray the gay away.
I take it from your answer that if you find yourself at the end of a hangman’s noose, well it’s your fault and we shouldn’t have any issue with a state that executes its citizens for it.
Or perhaps if you condemn Israel for barbaric acts but are ok with other nations doing equally barbaric things then you’re just a hypocrite.
I would have thought that writing “depending on who you talk to” would show that I recognise that there is no united opinion on orientation choice. I came through the public school brainwashing in the mid-’70s where we had same-sex couples tell us that they were born that way, I have also known families where children have appeared to confirm that view. I also know more than a handful of people who say that they felt that way but certain events have changed their orientation so as far as I am concerned there is no measurable evidence to support either side. I am against the death penalty & while my original comment could be interpreted in the way you describe that was not my intention.
My point remains that the issues are different & while it is unfortunate that people are often at different stages in their recognition of various rights we can at least support any good things they do even if we don’t support other ideas they have.
It would be hypocritical for the global community to allow this apartheid state to participate in the Olympic because Russia ban for invading Ukraine on very credible advise and necessary unlike the mast slaughter and starvation inflicted on the most persecuted peoples on planet earth.
Free Palestine
Would you care to read what you have written stephen and then advise corrections.
Israel is a god medal winner ,,,, in their national ‘sport’ of killing civilian men, women and children https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/10/video-shows-israeli-soldiers-executing-unarmed-palestinian-man/
It’s also worth noting that the Zionist/Israel supporters in this thread do not deny what John Minto pointed out about Israels actions ….
They all deserve a medal to …. https://media-en.almayadeen.net/archive/image/2022/2/23/7cba6562-2ac8-4dbd-80e8-ab65b72ac074.png?preset=w800
typo — Israel is gold medal winner
Terrible commenters mostly. As per South Africa sanctions all the way. I would prefer to send in an army, but the scumbags give me no army.
I never want to see the Israel flag again. Like the swastika. Zionism was wrong from the start — clearing off the original people. Thanks, great John.
Truth versus Trotter’s ‘the art of the possible’. He went off somewhere. Syncretistic him still think he’s Left . actually can still put a good Left case, apart from his otherwise tosh.
To add some light to the heat generated above, the current cruelty and sadism of the latest incarnation of the Netanyahu government may be attributable to the ghastly philosophy of Kahanism, derived from a far right New York rabbi who got banned from Israel for increasing tensions between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Unfortunately, although this despicable rebbe himself got assassinated in 1988, he left philosophical progeny. One of them, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is the Netanyahu regime’s Minister for National Security and his ilk fantasise about destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and colonising the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. He doesn’t believe in clemency and compassion for Palestinian non-combatants and his Oztma Yehudit party are the lynchpin of Netanyahu’s current depredations in Gaza. They’re supported by hardline ultra-Orthodox Haredi and Hasidi Jewish settlers, and also what appear to neofascist sects like Lehava, which doesn’t like Christians or interfaith/cross-cultural marriages, and La Familia, a pack of violent football hooligans. As a lawyer, Ben-Gvir routinely defended anti-Arab ultrazionist terrorists. Happily, American Jews are increasingly disgusted and abhor what Ben-Gvir and his cronies are up to and so is the European Union. I wish our government would grow a pair and crack down on these Kahanist extremists.