By Rachel Mohamed
This year’s Olympic Summer Games hosted the contentious opening ceremony on Friday, 26 July for the first time outside of the stadium in the city of Paris, France.
The event was seen by many as a historic moment for the spectators and the sports fraternity at large.
However, the BDS coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cape Town organization Usuf Chikte, have expressed their dissatisfaction against Israel, for participating in the Olympic Games and have called for the state of Israel to be boycotted.
“The SA BDS coalition calls for the banning of Israel from the Olympics Paris 2024 saying apartheid, genocide, and killing of the Palestinians is not a sport. Apartheid Israel uses its participation in International Sporting structures as a tool of normalization”, said Chikte
He also highlighted the role that South Africa played in boycotting Israel.
“The Sports boycott against apartheid South Africa had a powerful important impact on its relations against the racist regime. Palestinians are making the same call against normalization and are calling to isolate apartheid Israel and, unquestionably, Israel is still able to participate in global events such as the Olympics Games and Football World Cup and other international competition”, he said.
Furthermore, Chikte welcomed Deputy Minister Sport, Arts, and Culture Peace Mabe for condemning Israel’s participation and has since issued a warning against Minister Gayton McKenzie should he try to bully her into reversing her statement.
The co-founder of the International Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement Omar Barghouti has referred to the Paris Olympics as the genocide games.
“By welcoming the apartheid Israel amid the televised genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza strip the Paris Olympics has become the genocide games while Israel still commits genocide’, he stated.
“The International Olympic Committee is enabling and whitewashing apartheid Israel genocide which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians with numerous percentage of them being women and children”.
The coalition also noted the killing of hundreds of Palestinian athletes and 69 Olympians. He believes the sports infrastructure is being wiped out in Gaza and used as torture and concentration camps.
“Mohammed Hamada was the first Olympian Palestinian weightlifter is one of many Palestinians who won’t be able to participate in the Olympics he lost 20 kilograms due to Israel’s engineer famine in Gaza”, he concluded.
VOC News
Photo: @Palestine_UN/X
