AS I SEE IT COLUMN: IOC will not bar Israel from the Olympics

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/05/2024 (355 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sadly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has unequivocally said Israel will be allowed to participate in this summer’s Olympics, despite its war in Gaza that has left over 35,000 Palestinians dead.

Many people, countries and companies from around the world are aghast at what Israel is doing to Gazans. The unfathomable one-sided death toll – 35,000 dead Palestinians compared to 1,200 dead Israelis – is beyond immoral. Keep in mind that the number of dead Palestinians does not include another 10,000 Gazans that are missing and presumed buried under all the rubble.

The hope for many peace- and justice-seeking people around the world was that the IOC would ban Israel from the Olympics because of its immoral war in Gaza, for the same reasons it banned Russia from the Olympics for its immoral war in Ukraine.

If Russia was banned from the Olympics due to the death and destruction it wrought in Ukraine, it was reasonable and logical to expect that the enormous and inhumane death and destruction of Palestinians at the hand of the Israeli army would impel the IOC to similarly ban Israel.

Unfortunately, that did not happen.

In addition to the IOC’s current Russian Olympic ban, if we look back further in Olympic history, it’s worth remembering that South Africa was banned from the Olympics for many years, from the 1972 Munich games to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, because of its system of apartheid that ran counter to the Olympic Charter, which prohibits discrimination against any country or individual based on race, religion, gender or political affiliation.

If one considers the crimes against humanity that Israel carries out against Palestine on an hourly basis in Gaza, it seems rather obvious that the actions of the Israeli army also run counter to the Olympic Charter. Even before Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, it has been well documented that what has been going on for years in Gaza and Palestine is significantly worse than was the South African version of apartheid.

Now that Israelis will be allowed to compete in Paris, the IOC will face all manner of criticism, as will the Israeli athletes. As the grotesquely disproportional death toll in Gaza gets higher, as the famine worsens, as evermore gruesome stories of Israel’s barbarism and war crimes are exposed, there will definitely be some kind of a backlash, whether in the form of protests, booing, unfavourable media coverage or other ways of people expressing their abject horror for what Israel is doing in Gaza. One can only imagine what the reaction will be of fans in the stadium when Israel marches in the opening ceremony. It will not be pretty.

About the concept of proportionality.

In recent weeks you have read in this paper people contorting themselves into all manner of ethical knots as they attempt to defend the indefensible – the systematic annihilation of Gaza and what the International Criminal Court considers plausible genocide. (In addition to the enormous disparity in the death toll, the United Nations estimates it will take 14 years to clear the 37 million tonnes of rubble in Gaza, such is the extent of Israel’s bombs to homes, schools, hospitals, universities, and daycare facilities, all of which, it should be noted, are war crimes).

Simply put there is no universe where the killing of thousands upon thousands of innocent women and children can be justified as “self-defense.” Here’s a question for those who twist themselves into moral pretzels defending Israel’s indefensible slaughter of Palestinians — would they still support their theory of proportionality if the numbers were reversed, if there were 35,000 Israeli deaths but only 1,200 Palestinian deaths? Of course they wouldn’t, which tells you everything you need to know about their “I dare not say it out loud” belief that a Palestinian life is not as valuable as an Israeli life. How tragic is that?

The International Olympic Committee’s decision to allow Israel to compete at the Paris games makes a mockery of the Olympic Charter. Why it thinks Russia should be barred from the Summer Olympics but not Israel, is a topic for another day. And why the IOC would risk appearing to the international community that it approves of the gravest of war crimes being committed in Gaza, is anyone’s guess.