RUTHFULLY YOURS

Consider the following: A soccer star living in an Arab dictatorship doesn’t much care for black people. He therefore refuses a transfer to a Premier League club in England because it has two blacks on its staff. He publishes his reasons on his website but the affair is barely reported in the press and the football authorities are so far silent.

Now consider this: Demonstrators and activists in a Scandinavian country in Europe object to an international tennis match because the visiting players are black. The sports authorities in collusion with the government cave in to pressure and force the match to be played behind closed doors.

Finally, consider the following: At the 2008 Olympics a swimmer from an Islamist theocracy makes it clear that he will not compete against a black man. In order to avoid penalties he then says he has withdrawn from the competition due to illness. The International Olympic Committee accepts his explanation without demur.

Substitute “Israeli-Jew” for “black man”, and the above is a precise representation of recent events in international sport.

 

The first example concerns the Egyptian soccer star Amr Zaki who has just refused a potentially lucrative transfer to Portsmouth FC because it employs two Israelis: defender Tal Ben Haim and director of football Avram Grant. Zaki said on his website:

“I refused their offer before, but now joining Portsmouth is no longer an option for me. After Portsmouth signed an Israeli player and also hired an Israeli football director a possible move was ruled out.”

According to opinion polls anti-Semitism is ubiquitous in Egyptian society where polite distinctions between “Israelis” or “Zionists” and “Jews” are rarely bothered with. As I note in my recently published book (see link below), a poll by Pew in 2006 found that 97 percent of Egyptians confessed to holding unfavourable opinions about Jews.

Since football’s international bodies in cooperation with the United Nations are running a massive campaign under the rubric “Kick Racism out of Football” it will be interesting to see how they react. If Zaki had in fact directed his bigotry against black people he would, rightly, now be facing a lengthy (possibly lifetime) ban and a huge fine. But given the way that other international sports bodies have effectively turned a blind eye to virulent anti-Semitism we should not hold our collective breath.

In March this year, authorities in the Swedish city of Malmo — which has a large Muslim minority and a leftist municipal council — forced a Davis Cup tennis match between Sweden and Israel to be played behind closed doors saying they could not guarantee the Israeli players’ safety after protestors threatened to disrupt the event.

Malmo was initially banned by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) from hosting Davis Cup matches for five years and the Swedish tennis authorities were given a $25,000 fine. The ban is pointless since other Swedish cities are still allowed to host Davis Cup events and the fine was reduced on appeal to $5,000 — a sum of money so trivial that most readers could pay it out of their own pockets.

The swimming event referred to concerned the case of Iran’s Mohammad Alirezaei who withdrew from a 100-metre breaststroke heat at the Beijing Olympics that included an Israeli competitor. His threadbare claims that he pulled out due to illness were simply accepted at face value by the International Olympic Committee despite the fact that Iranian athletes have a track record of boycotting Israeli competitors.

At the Olympics in Athens in 2004, Arash Miresmaeili Iran’s gold medal favourite in the Judo competition pulled out of a bout with an Israeli competitor. He publicly stated that he would not compete against an Israeli because he was an Israeli and was congratulated by the Iranian government for saying so.

Even more disgustingly, the Iranian basketball team at the Paralympics last year withdrew from the competition to avoid meeting the Israeli wheelchair team. Iran has not been banned from international sporting events.

The conclusion to be drawn from such examples is clear: anti-Semitism is deemed acceptable by the world’s top sports bodies who are steadfastly refusing to take appropriate action to stamp it out. It is now a matter of urgency that a campaign is launched to reverse this shameful state of affairs.