This is the type of news I like waking up to :â)
all the shade thank u yes good more content like this
those people saying âthis is petty itâs about sportsmanshipâ should take note that Israel barred the Palestinian team from taking all of their equipment of the country meaning they had to buy everything new in Brazil Â
Yea, can we not act like this is some sort of Palestinian solidarity? All of these countries have expelled their Jewish populations and also treat Palestinian refugees like shit. This is plain old antisemitism.
If these were stories about Palestinian athletes refusing to compete with Israelis, I would not have any harsh words, because they have every right to protest their treatment by the Israeli government.Â
But Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, and Saudi athletes reacting to Israelis this way is nothing but pure antisemitism. Many of the Israeli athletes competing in the Olympics, including Or Sasson (the judoka pictured above), are Mizrahiâi.e. Jews who hail from Middle Eastern and North African communities. As @femme-with-cherries said, all of these countries expelled their Jewish populations, which resulted in the majority of MENA Jews seeking refuge in Israel (more than half of all Israelis are of African or Middle Eastern extraction).
So hereâs the thing: If you ethnically cleanse Jews from your country, you donât get to make a judgment on the nationality they adopted as a result of your kicking them out. That doesnât mean you have to like Israel, but it does mean that singling out and isolating Israelis in this context is antisemitic, because the message is essentially that you would rather have seen the Jews you expelled from your country die than go to the only place that was willingly to take them in; we canât win.Â
You know how we criticize the U.S. for destabilizing regions and then having the gaul to balk at refugees who are fleeing from the aftermath of those interventions? Well, the same principal applies here. You canât get mad that Jews became Israelis when youâre the reason their families fled to Israel in the first place.Â
Also, Israel is the only country getting this treatment despite not being the only country guilty of human rights abuses. There was a Tunisian tennis player not too long ago who refused to play an Israeli, but in these Olympics, the Tunisian Judoka had no problems competing against an athlete from Turkey, despite Turkeyâs numerous human rights abuses against Kurds, ethnic Armenians, and others (not to mention the fact that Turkey is teetering on the brink of fascism in wake of the coup against Erdogan). Iran and Russia have competed against one another at these Olympics. UAE and Yemen have done the same. Lebanon and the United States. Morocco and China.Â
Or how about this one:Â
On Sunday, Egyptian wrestler Haithem Mahmoud initiated a handshake with opponent, Yun Won-Chol, who was representing his home country ofâwait for itâNorth Korea. You knowâŠthat fascist dictatorship just up the road from South Korea whose abuses were found by Human Rights watch to be âwithout parallel in the contemporary world, [including] extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence.â Yeah, that North Korea.Â
So what all of this tells me is that these protestations against Israeli athletes have nothing to do with morality or human rights objections, and everything to do with punishing Jews for âgetting above their station.â This is not progressivism or solidarity; itâs a way of saying âyou fucking Jews donât know your place.â
If you choose to ignore that, regardless of your opinion on Israel and its government, then youâre enabling antisemitism.
