MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / July 23, 2024
Left-wing lawmaker says Israeli athletes should compete under a neutral banner in protest against the war on Gaza, drawing accusations of antisemitism.
The participation of Israel in the Olympic Games that will begin next Friday in Paris has aroused heated controversy in France after a left-wing MP said the country should be shunned over its war on Gaza.
At a pro-Gaza rally on Saturday, France Unbowed (LFI) MP Thomas Portes was filmed saying Israel’s Olympic delegation was “not welcome in Paris”, and that there should be protests against its taking part in the games.
“Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Olympic Games in Paris,” Portes said, calling for using “the deadline” of the event and “all the levers that we have to create mobilizations and denounce the presence of a state which today massacres [the Palestinian] people.”
Portes represents Seine-Saint-Denis, the department that hosts the Olympic Village and the Stade de France.
Later, he clarified his comments, saying that he was not opposed to the presence of Israeli athletes but wanted “French diplomacy to put pressure on the IOC [International Olympic Committee] so that the Israeli flag and anthem are not allowed during these Olympic Games, as is done for Russia”.
Despite his follow-up comments, the MP’s remarks sparked an outcry, with many political figures on the right and left denouncing them.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin expressed the “disgust” he felt at Portes’s remarks, which he said “smack of antisemitism”, adding that the MP was putting “a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”.
Darmanin announced that the Israeli athletes would receive 24-hour protection from the GIGN, French elite forces, during the competition.
Reacting to Portes’ statements, Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne told a meeting of European Union counterparts in Brussels on Monday: “I want to say that on behalf of France, to the Israeli delegation, we welcome you to France for these Olympic Games.”
On the left, Carole Delga, the socialist president of the southeastern Occitanie region, denounced the comments as “irresponsible and unworthy”.
“No one has forgotten Munich 72. A few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, the hateful remarks of Thomas Portes contribute to threatening the security of the Israeli delegation and that of Paris 2024,” she posted on X, in reference to the 1972 hostage-taking by the Black September Palestinian organization during which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.
The president of the far-right National Rally (RN) party Jordan Bardella also drew a parallel with the infamous event, saying that it was “the same uninhibited and blind hatred that killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972”.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), a pro-Israel organization, described Portes’ comments as “irresponsible”.
“Since 7 October, Thomas Portes has legitimized Hamas. He now puts a target on the backs of Israeli athletes, already the most threatened in the Olympic Games,” he wrote on X:
Translation: “…1972: 11 Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics. 2024: LFI calls for the exclusion of Israeli athletes from the Paris Olympics.…”
Yet the Palestinian Olympic Committee on Monday accused Israel of breaching the Olympic truce, set from 19 July to mid-September, by conducting “bombings on Gaza resulting in civilian casualties” and killing hundreds of athletes and sportspeople.
In an open letter addressed to the IOC chairman, the Palestinian Committee has formally requested “the immediate exclusion of Israel from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games”, saying that approximately 400 athletes had been killed since October and many sports facilities destroyed.
On social networks, Portes’ comments sparked an avalanche of criticism, as well as calls to prosecute the MP, who people accused of antisemitism.
The hashtag #PortesAuTribunal (“Portes in the courthouse”) has been trending in France for several days.
Internet users notably re-shared a drawing by well-known cartoonist Plantu, where Portes is seen with a skull face, a green bandana around his head, crushing with his foot the decapitated head of an Israeli athlete lying nearby.
The title reads: “Thomas-Portes-Ouvertes-A-l’Antisémitisme”, in a wordplay on the meaning in French of the MP’s surname (“Thomas-Doors-Open-To-Antisemitism”).
Several organizations considered to be pro-Israel, such as Lawyers Without Borders and the European Jewish Organization (EJO), said they would file a complaint against the MP, denouncing “dangerous calls to hatred”.
Another organization, the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), announced it would refer other comments by Portes, calling for sanctions against “French-Israelis complicit in war crimes in the Gaza Strip”, to the prosecutor’s office.
Since 7 October, the MP has made several appeals to take to court all dual nationals suspected of war crimes in Israel and Palestine.
But this proactive stance, as well as his party’s support for Palestinians, particularly since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, have attracted accusations of antisemitism, which LFI denies.
“Their tactics are always the same: disqualify any criticism of Israeli policy, make its crimes invisible and deny the reality, even justify, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the acceleration of colonization and war crimes in the West Bank,” Portes wrote in a column on Monday.
‘Double standards’
Following the backlash, the MP said his comments were motivated by a desire to “put an end to ‘double standards’”.
“The IOC has on several occasions banned countries from participating in the Olympic Games for their role in wars and crimes against humanity. For example, South Africa was excluded from the Games for 30 years, between 1962 and 1992, in reaction to its apartheid policy,” he said.
“The Israeli anthem and flag should not be brandished at the Olympics as long as Israel continues to commit war crimes in Gaza and to intensify illegal colonization in the West Bank.”
This call has been made by other members of his party, as well as pro-Palestine groups, who ask that Israeli athletes participate in the Olympics under a neutral banner, like Russian and Belarusian competitors.
In January, more than 300 Palestinian sports clubs, youth centres and civil society organizations signed an appeal to the IOC asking the sports body to “apply its principles and fulfil its obligations by banning Israel from the next Olympic Games”, starting a boycott campaign called #BanIsrael which gathered thousands of signatures.
Translation: “Strong action in front of the headquarters of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games to denounce the participation of Israeli athletes in the #JOParis2024.”
The Palestinian sports groups noted that while the IOC promptly imposed sanctions on Russia, it has refused to apply the same standards to Israel’s decades-old occupation, and has sanctioned “sports federations and individual athletes who dare to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses or who take moral stances in solidarity with Palestinians”.
In December, the IOC announced that Russia was banned from participating in the Paris Olympics due to its invasion of Ukraine, as well as Belarus for its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Their athletes will only be able to participate in the competition individually and under a neutral banner, with the Olympic flag and anthem in place of their national symbols in the event of a podium victory. No representation will be possible in team sports.
On the other hand, the IOC has declined to apply the same sanction to Israel.
In March, IOC President Thomas Bach told Le Monde that “the Israeli Olympic Committee has not violated the Olympic Charter”.
“In the Olympic world, we have had for 30 years what the political world calls a two-state solution: we have a National Olympic Committee of Israel and a National Olympic Committee of Palestine [which] coexist peacefully,” he said.
In April, French President Emmanuel Macron similarly justified the difference in treatment reserved for Russian and Belarusian athletes by saying that the situation was “very different” because Israel is “not an attacker”.
To defend the non-exclusion of Israel, Macron also highlighted the presence of Palestinian athletes.
However, this equivalence has been questioned by observers.
A Mediapart article noted that while Israel was able to participate in the Olympics as early as 1952, four years after the proclamation of the state, Palestine had to wait until 1995 for the IOC to recognize its national committee, and the 1996 Olympic Games in the United States city of Atlanta to send its first athlete.
Pascal Boniface, specialist of sports diplomacy and director of IRIS, a think tank based in Paris, further pointed out that Palestinian athletes have not enjoyed the same conditions of preparation for competitions as Israeli ones, essentially because of the destruction of sports infrastructure in Gaza and the obstacles to movements imposed by Israel within the occupied territories and to go abroad.
“It is a false argument to say that equality is respected between Israelis and Palestinians because, beyond bombing civilian populations, Israel prevents Palestinian athletes from preparing and even kills many of them,” Boniface said.
Dozens of Palestinian athletes have been killed by Israeli bombings on Gaza. Among them, Hani al-Masdar, 42, coach of the Palestinian Olympic football team; Nagham Abu Samrah, 24, celebrated female karate champion, and Nazir al-Nashnash, a 20-year-old rising football star.
“It is as a rival to the western world…that Russia was excluded, and it is as a friend of the western world that Israel is not,” Boniface added, denouncing a “selective outrage”.
Tony Estanguet, president of the Olympics organizing committee, said: “The Paris 2024 Games must be a space for celebrating peace.”
On Friday the International Court of Justice in the Hague issued a historic legal judgement that Israel’s 57-year-old occupation of Palestinian land amounted to annexation and must be ended. The court said Israel has no right to sovereignty of the Palestinian territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force, and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
It said other nations were obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory.
According to a recent estimate published in the medical journal The Lancet, the actual death toll caused by Israel’s war on Gaza could exceed 186,000 Palestinians killed, well above the figure of 39,000 reported by Gaza’s health ministry so far, on account of the thousands of people buried under the rubble or the mounting “indirect” deaths as a result of Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s food distribution, healthcare and sanitation systems.
Meanwhile, dozens of members of the Israeli delegation landed in Paris on Monday, and President Isaac Herzog is expected in the French capital at the end of the week to inaugurate the world sports event.
