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| Moslems Try to Keep Women and Israelis Out of International Sports |
| 2004-08-20 |
| From The Wall Street Journal, an opinion article by Franklin Foer, the author of How Soccer Explains the World. .... Last week ... Iranian judo champion ... Arash Miresmaeili quit the Olympics entirely. As the jukoda told the Iranian government's official news service: "I refuse to fight my Israeli opponent ... " His one-man boycott earned him encomiums from President Mohammad Khatami. According to reports, the Iranians planned on rewarding Mr. Miresmaeili with $115,000, the purse handed out to gold medalists. Under Olympic protocol, such ad hoc political boycotts are forbidden. (The prohibitions placed on South Africa's apartheid-era teams, by contrast, were official and the product of international consensus.) .... if the Iranians had owned up to their intentions and the Olympics officials had felt inclined to follow their own rules, the country would have been subject to stiff sanctions. .... The Iranians will apparently pay no price for their transgression. Unfortunately, this is a typical tale. Israel continually suffers sporting boycotts, and officials, Olympic and otherwise, continually turn a blind eye toward this injection of politics into sport. Ever since Israel's founding, some Muslim nations have refused to compete against the Jewish state. In 1962, when Indonesia hosted the Asian Games, it chose to officially cancel the event rather than permit Israeli participation. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the boycott intensified and has come to permeate almost every venue. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #5 150 million arabs afraid of a lousy 3 million Jews? Behaviour has reasons. I suspect in this case the various arab govt's have let it be known that any athlete unfortunate enough to lose to a jew will have to undergo a "re-education" process. Like I wouldn't want to have been a german athlete in 1936 who lost to an American "untermensch". |
| Posted by: DLS 2004-08-20 10:39:19 AM |
| #4 Organizers feared that the mere presence of Israelis would cause the entire Muslim world to drop out. And that would be bad because...? Apparently Muslim parents never tell their children they are too old to still believe in cooties. |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-08-20 10:01:09 AM |
| #3 I can sympathize with these guys. Being constantly beaten by women and Joos isn't good for their fragile egos. |
| Posted by: Dar 2004-08-20 9:44:47 AM |
| #2 The "international community" (UN, IOC, etc.) are simply a bunch of f*cking petrowhores to the oil-rich arab states. So appeasing the arabs by taking it out on Israel is a cheap price to pay. And yet, the exquisite irony of it all is that these spineless suckups accuse the US of attacking Iraq purely for the oil. |
| Posted by: PlanetDan 2004-08-20 9:28:31 AM |
| #1 You can add the IOC to the crowded list of other appeasers including the UN, IRC, Democratic party, etc. Considering that a guy in a blue tutu can take a dive off the 3 meter platform during the competition then what could a few stupid islamoterrorist do? It ain't over til the fat lady sings. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back 2004-08-20 9:19:28 AM |