The imbalanced and prejudiced criteria by which the International Olympic Committee chooses to take action against countries reveal the political and moral inconsistencies reflective of other international bodies. During this genocide in Gaza, the contradictions are glaringly evident.
With the Wimbledon tennis tournament beginning this week and the Olympics quickly approaching, I am reflecting on the Black Agenda Report column I wrote two years ago in this space, The Sport’s World’s Selective Moral Indignation.
The primary focus was highlighting the contradictions and hypocrisy of FIFA, the governing body for the World Cup, the Boston Marathon and Wimbledon for banning athletes from Russia and Belarus in the wake of the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
Such bans have never been applied to US athletes in spite of the country’s perpetual wars and invasions around the world. If Russians can be banned from this year’s Olympic games, then surely US athletes should have been banned from competition after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as just one example of US crimes. According to David Vine, since its founding in 1776, the United States has only been without war for 11 years. It would seem that team US should never have been allowed in any international sports competitions. The same case can be made against Israeli athletes competing at the very least since 1967 if not 1948 for their country’s occupation of Palestine.
Nine months into Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Palestine, none of the same athletic organizations are even considering such a ban for Israelis and US athletes. These two nations are responsible for war crimes and for what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has characterized as a “plausible” claim of genocide.
There is a precedent for a nation being banned from the Olympic games because of its human rights abuses. Apartheid South Africa was banned from Olympic competition from 1964 to 1993. Surely Israel’s killing of more than 40,000 people, starvation of the population, and the destruction of hospitals qualify as behavior serious enough to merit an Olympic ban.
In spite of all the pronouncements of being a-political, these entities actually took clear political actions with their bans. While the International Olympic Committee IOC has invited multiple athletes from Russia and Belarus to the games in Paris later this month to perform as individuals, they maintain the ban on the flags of those countries and team participation.
The IOC behaves the same way that the International Criminal Court (ICC) behaves, which can succumb to western pressure to issue arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin but act only under duress and international pressure to apply for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister. Consistency would have had ICC arrest warrants also issued for Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin. But therein lies the point about hypocritical actions taken by organizations allied with the United States.
What are we to make of this blatant double standard? It is clear that these sports entities are little more than water carriers for the collective west in general and for US imperialism in particular. The IOC is one of many putatively independent entities that actually act at the behest of the imperialist western nations.
It was appropriate for South Africa to be banned from the Olympics. Not doing so would have given tacit approval to its racist policies. Silence regarding Israel’s ongoing war crimes, and allowing Israeli participation gives approval to its actions as well. The leaders of the IOC and other organizations have turned themselves into political organizations by complying with US dictates instead of responding to protests against Israel’s documented war crimes.
Russia appealed the ban against its athletes but was rejected by the IOC. Consider the response from the IOC head Thomas Back to Russia’s appeal. “The Russian government apparently is ignoring the fact they have forced us into action. It is their invasion and in particular, it is their annexation of part of Ukraine.”
Israel has been annexing Palestinian land for over 75 years with absolutely no action taken by the IOC or anyone else, making this a very amazing response. The bright light of resistance has primarily come from Palestinians themselves. They have kept the pressure on FIFA to ban Israeli athletes which is exactly what it did to the Russian soccer team two years ago. That said, though this is happening within a “sports” space, the remedies are above and beyond sports. They require a total dismantling of the US/NATO axis of imperial domination that has been at the root of such injustices and compliance from allegedly independent organizations like the IOC for far too long. That struggle is long and protracted and will not be achieved by the playing of any games, on a sports field or otherwise.
Gus Griffin is a DC area-based independent sportswriter, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team, the Ujima People’s Progress Party and he is a member of the National Steering Committee for Faculty for Justice in Palestine.
John Parker is Coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles and a candidate for a congressional seat in California’s 37th District.
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