An MP for the radical-left France Unbowed party has sparked outrage after saying Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Paris Olympics and calling for protests against their presence.
Citing Israel’s war in Gaza, Thomas Portes told a pro-Palestinian gathering in Paris on Saturday: “We are just a few days away from an international event to be held in Paris, the Olympic Games. And I’m here to say that no, the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Olympic Games in Paris. We have to use this deadline and all the levers we have to mobilise.”
Yonathan Arfi, the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), described the comments as “indecent” and “irresponsible”, accusing Portes of “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”.
Arfi reminded the MP that 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics and said the country’s Olympians were “already the most in danger” at the Games.
Ah yes we are absolved from all our currently ongoing crimes, due to previous crimes committed against our ancestors. Logic much.
*due to previous crimes committed against our ancestors as retaliation for the exact same thing we’re doing right now
It’s geopolitical narcissism. This is DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender).
If you’re American and don’t like this then know we’ve got a gigantic splinter in our own eye.
They can compete under a new flag like the Russians did awhile ago.
Does that apply to the palestinian athletes? Oh, wait, most have been genocided already
This really is the right answer, as much as I despise what Israel is doing.
The Olympics should be about increasing non-hostile relations between people of the world and I don’t think anyone should be excluded.
Complicating this stance though is the compulsory military service that means that the attending athletes are associated with the military and the ongoing atrocities.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An MP for the radical-left France Unbowed party has sparked outrage after saying Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Paris Olympics and calling for protests against their presence.
Yonathan Arfi, the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), described the comments as “indecent” and “irresponsible”, accusing Portes of “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”.
Arfi reminded the MP that 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics and said the country’s Olympians were “already the most in danger” at the Games.
Portes later told Le Parisien newspaper that French diplomats should put pressure on the International Olympic Committee to ban the Israeli flag and anthem at the Games, which open on Friday, “as is done for Russia”.
The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said: “The hints of antisemitism in his [Portes’] comments are obvious.”
Israel’s football team is scheduled to play its first match of the Olympics against Mali in Paris’s Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony.
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