PARIS– Israel’s Olympic team said some athletes received threats while competing in Paris amid heightened tensions over the deaths of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and the threat of wider regional conflict in the Middle East.
Yael Arad, president of Israel’s National Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that team members received “centralized” threats designed to generate “psychological terror” in athletes, without elaborating.
Last week, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into death threats emailed to Israeli athletes, and the national cybercrime agency is investigating the online leak of some Israeli athletes’ personal data, which has since been removed. Prosecutors also opened an inquiry into incitement to racial hatred after Israeli athletes received “discriminatory gestures” during a match between Israel and Paraguay.
Tom Reuveny, a 24-year-old Israeli athlete who won a gold in windsurfing over the weekend, he was among those who said they had received threats. Politics “should be left aside” during the Games, he told the AP during a memorial Tuesday for the 11 Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany.
“I don’t believe any politics should be involved in sport, especially the Olympic Games,” said Reuveny. “Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics involved – not in the Games – from people who don’t want us to compete and don’t want us to be here. I received some messages and threats.”
Although Israel has called for the Olympic Games to remain a neutral space, the Palestinian delegation used the Games as a way to generate conversation about the daily struggles of those in Gaza. O Israel-Hamas War claimed more than 39,000 Palestinian lives.
“What really hurts me is that now people look at Palestinians just as numbers. The number of people who died. The number of people displaced,” Palestinian-American Olympic swimmer Valerie Tarazi told the AP on Sunday.
“As athletes, we are here like everyone else. We want to compete. As people, we have lives. … We want to live in our homes, just like everyone else in the world,” she added.
As global leaders raised the alarm over the deaths in Gaza and called on Hamas and Israel to agree to a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would accept nothing less than a “total victory” against Hamas.
The world is gathering in Paris at a time of global political upheavalmultiple wars, historical migration it is a deepening climate crisisall issues that came to the forefront of conversations at the Olympics.
Tensions across the Middle East are rising following the murders last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Main political leader of Hamas in Iran, in alleged Israeli attacks. Both groups are supported by Iran.
The Palestinian Olympic team has demanded that the International Olympic Committee ban Israel from competing in the Olympics, claiming that the country has violated the Olympic Charter. Last week, the Palestinian delegation said it has not received a response from the IOC and plans to take its appeal to the higher sporting courts.
The Israeli team was met with boos in the stadiums during the playing of the country’s national anthem, and the athletes arrived at the events under heavy police escort, including riot police vans.
“Nowadays it is not easy to be an Israeli athlete on the international stage,” said Arad, head of Israel’s Olympic committee. The Olympics are “a bridge between people, between countries, between religions. And we are here to compete.”
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Associated Press journalists Megan Janetsky and Alex Turnbull contributed to this report.
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