Israeli sportspeople "not welcome at the Paris Olympic Games"

Far-left French lawmaker, Thomas Portes, announced at a Free Palestine protest today that “the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli sportspeople are not welcome at the Paris Olympic Games.” He also called for protestors to “mobilize” against it.

Israeli athletes… pic.twitter.com/RBnFjZAb2W

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) July 21, 2024

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Far-left French lawmaker, Thomas Portes, announced at a Free Palestine protest today that “the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli sportspeople are not welcome at the Paris Olympic Games.” He also called for protestors to “mobilize” against it.

Israeli athletes are facing abuse in every corner — from anonymous death threats to threats from a government official.

French Jewish groups, as well as other left-wing politicians, have condemned Portes, and say he is putting a target on Israeli athletes’ backs.

But the damage of a government leader publicly calling to ban Israelis from the Olympics is not so easily reversed. And French Jews, who are already experiencing unprecedented hatred, will be left to deal with the antisemitic fallout.

Comments

[Joanne]

This is a far left-wing politician, but I can't help feeling that he's just playing to the crowd, making political hay while the sun shines. Nevertheless, I wonder if this snowballing of antisemitic and anti-Israel activity will ever end, even after the Israel/Hamas war is over. It's hard to know where genuine concern for the Palestinians, ignorance, and ideology end and political opportunism begins. This pro-Hamas bandwagon is getting awfully large.

The problem is that Hamas is winning the propaganda war hands down. Actually, Israel had been losing that war all along. The Palestinian case is an easier one to make, even though it's not completely in the right, and one reason is that its arguments are easier to convey on a simplistic level.

But there's more: Many Western countries, especially in Europe, have Muslim populations that are growing. Further, the Muslim communities are very anti-Israel, and have a much higher level of antisemitism than the rest of the populations of these countries. The political parties can't afford to ignore them. Alas, Muslims appear to have a high voter turnout for elections, and while they mainly vote for left-wing parties, they are conservative on social issues, so no party can take their support for granted.

Then there are the countries of MENA. Even if some of the governments in the Middle Eastern are willing to normalize relations with Israel, most of their own citizens aren't. And for the Western countries to maintain their influence and guard their substantial geopolitical/economic interests in the region, they have to win over the hearts and minds of the people there.

Israel is a valuable ally because it's a source of technology, military training, and intelligence, but relations with that country comes at a cost. And any expression of friendliness (or even just lack of hostility) towards Israel means jeopardizing one's own political career. Admittedly, Netanyahu and his right-wing government aren't making things any easier, but Israel does seem to be in a damned-if-you-do, damned if you don't situation. It really has been for decades.

I'm guessing that things will simmer down after the war ends, but I don't think they will never go back to how they were before October 7.

[Mick H]

A very fair summary. Yes, I hope that things will get better, but it does seem like a one-way trajectory for Israel in terms of western public opinion, just getting worse and worse. Things can change, though - especially if the regime in Iran falls.

[Graham]

Richard Landes's piece in Fathom gives a good understanding of what is happening and why and the reason 'palestinianism' had to be created as an exclusive claim to the land of Israel, delegitimising that of the Jews. The fact that the Jewish state exists is an existential threat to the validity of Islam.

'The reason why the Arab world, and the Muslim-Arab world in particular, find Israel categorically unacceptable goes back to the doctrine of Dar al Harb, Dar al Islam. The land between the river and sea became a key part of the exploding Arab-Muslim empire – Dar al Islam – in the 7th century. Fast forward some 14 centuries, and the dissolution of the Caliphate in 1924 (the first ‘Nakba’) put an end to Dar al Islam formally. In the eyes of the West, Islam, the millennia-long foe, had been put in its place.

But this triumphalist vision of a world ultimately entirely submitted to Allah (through Islam) lived on, taking on a more modern form, more powerful and effective than the Ottoman basket case. Hassan al-Banna formed the Muslim Brotherhood (1927), a multi-generational plan to revive true Islam, fight the forces of secular modernity making inroads in the Arab world whose progress al-Banna saw as a regression to the ‘Jahaliyya,’ i.e. the ‘Ignorance’ of the pre-Islamic Arab world. He sought a long-term, multi-generational goal of a new salvific and eventually global Caliphate in which Muslims ruled according to Sharia: Where there was Dar al Harb, there shall be Dar al Islam...

...The core of the Arab-Muslim irredentist demand that Israel be destroyed, is a direct expression of this imperialist Islam from its first century. Free infidels are anathema to Islam’s triumphalist sovereignty. ‘We cannot concede a grain of sand to Jews.’ For Abul A’la al-Maududi, the most systematic thinker of modern Islam explained, Jews must exist in the state of submission...

...Islam necessitated dominion. Its demotion on the world stage was an existential threat. Hence, losing the battle with the Jews threatened to be an unmitigated disaster, utter humiliation on a global scale in response to which, in complete confidence in their impending victory, the Arab League promised historic massacres. To lose would fatally wound triumphalist Islam’s need for visible dominion.'

https://fathomjournal.org/islamic-and-arab-imperialism-and-irredentism-is-driving-the-conflict-between-the-river-and-the-sea/