The IOC needs to prepare itself for inevitable impact of Israel-Palestine conflict on Paris Olympics

In a European women’s basketball qualifier last week, Ireland’s national team refused to shake hands or engage in the usual pre-game courtesies with their Israeli opponents. The reason stated by Ireland’s basketball federation was that Israeli player Dor Saar, in an interview leading up to the game, had said the Irish players “are quite antisemitic.”

Saar’s comments upset the Irish team, which reported the remarks to FIBA Europe and said they were inaccurate and inflammatory. As a result, Ireland did not want to shake hands with their opponents.

Unfounded accusations of antisemitism cannot be considered sportsmanlike conduct and the players were within their rights to object. According to reports, if the Irish team had simply pulled out of the game the federation would have been fined more than $250,000 Cdn, a crippling amount for their program. 

This is not the first time athletes are speaking up about a political issue. Nor will it be the last. 

The backdrop of all this is four months of incessant and ruthless military bombardment on Gaza by Israel that began after the horrific Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Since then, its reported more than 1,100 Israelis and 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and 67,700 injured. As of Feb. 12, there are 101 Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas. 

There’s no way to exclude or omit this from the lives of athletes from that region living the chaos and madness, or others feeling the weight of this in their lives. 

Most recently, the Palestinian men’s soccer team competed with “anguished joy” in Qatar for the Asian Cup. Some of the players have lost family in the conflict and it’s not hard to understand the deep pain and grief they are feeling as they take to the pitch. Knowing your home is facing a military offensive is unimaginable for most of the world. Sports may be a connector of people, places and cultures, but there is unrest and frustration brewing in the sports ecosystem and it’s political. 

For years, sports tried to not be political, but this seems impossible these days. The reality is that sports are a reflection of people and society. With athletes calling for a ceasefire and organizations and federations in the global community calling for Israel to be banned by FIFA from soccer altogether, things are reaching a boiling point. 

Is the answer to ban Israeli athletes from international competition? The people are not always the government, so why punish athletes who might not agree with the practices and policies of the Israeli Defence Force?

After banning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee has said that the situation in Israel is not comparable. But the IOC had said little else regarding the deaths of Olympics coaches and athletes — innocent members of the sports community who have died in the Israeli offensive. The Palestinian Football Association has claimed that more than 85 athletes died between Oct. 7 and Dec. 6. 

Will we see more athletes refusing to compete against Israeli opponents at upcoming competitions? Will there be a place for expressing solidarity with Palestinian athletes whose resources and infrastructure has been destroyed. Or will we see a fine and penalties for athletes or fans for expressing solidarity with a tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes?

There have been expressions of solidarity with Palestinians from those in sports, from small grassroots organizations like Ultimate Frisbee to Stanley Cup winner Nazim Kadri of the Calgary Flames.

It feels wrong to ban athletes from an event like the Olympics that’s meant to unite the world through sport. But it also feels unacceptable to permit a country to participate while it is engaging in what the International Court of Justice has deemed to be perilously close to genocide without any accountability to the world. 

There are those who have argued that banning Russia (much like South Africa was banned for its apartheid polices in the last century) would be beneficial to sports. And now there are those who argue that it should be the same for Israel.

In a piece for Jacobin, Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff write: “If the IOC allows Russian and Israeli athletes to compete in Paris, it will be an insult to Ukrainians and Palestinians who have lost family, friends, livelihoods to brutal invasions. It will be an inversion of the IOC’s goal, articulated in the Olympic Charter, ‘to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.'”

Is the ‘neutral athlete’ tag an option?

If permitting the athletes to compete under a neutral flag is possible, as the IOC has with Russian athletes, that should be an option. There is also the possibility that if Israel is banned, then the athletes who oppose its military strategy might articulate it publicly. Rabbis have been protesting at United Nation headquarters in New York demanding a ceasefire. Might they turn their attention to the biggest stage in the world for sports?

And if Israel is banned, what about athletes who might want to protest at the Olympics? Would this be taking away their platform and access to dissent? 

No country in the world is free from a history of harm against people. Indigenous communities and historians can testify that Canada is also guilty of crimes against humanity. Should we be banned, too? Should the United States be banned due to their indifference to reproductive justice and rights for women? While those are certainly things that could be considered, 

While some athletes have paid a price for speaking out, other athletes (who are not Middle Eastern) have begun to weigh in on this topic and are actively demanding a ceasefire.

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, an Algerian judoka refused to compete against an Israeli competitor and was banned for 10 years as a result. It is not unreal to think that there may be protests leading up to, and at, the Olympics. 

Considering the strong sentiments emanating from different spaces all over the world, I wonder if the IOC is preparing to deal with it. In 2020, IOC president Thomas Bach said, “The Olympic Games are not about politics. The International Olympic Committee, as a civil non-governmental organization, is strictly politically neutral at all times.”

But the Olympics are about people and people are not politically neutral, not now and not in the future. Perhaps it’s time for the IOC to think long and hard about its position.

How will the next generation of athletes remember this moment in time? The difficulty is that right now there are bombs being dropped on innocent children. Their generation is so far away from the possibility of dreaming about being Olympians.

In cruel fashion and through no fault of their own, survival is now their sport. There’s nothing neutral about that.