British Paralympians Turn Backs During Israeli National Anthem
Britain’s wheelchair basketball team is under fire for turning their backs on the Israeli anthem, with critics calling it “deeply disrespectful and offensive”. The Telegraph has the story.
The team swivelled their wheelchairs around so they were facing away from the Israeli flag as it was raised during the playing of the Jewish state’s national anthem.
It is understood the players took part in the action in a protest over Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the October 7th 2023 massacre of 1,200 Jews by Hamas fighters.
The incident happened in the Cologne last Saturday during the opening ceremony of the third and final game of the group stage in the Wheelchair Basketball Nations Cup.
As the opening strains of Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, began to play, the British team could be seen turning their wheelchairs to face away from the official podium and the flags of the two countries.The British team’s coaching staff did not take part in the protest, which appeared to have been an initiative of the players.
The team’s gesture was criticised as both an insult to their opponents and being against the spirit of international sporting encounters. The Israeli Paralympic Committee lodged a formal complaint with the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation.
It called for sanctions against any sportsmen and women who repeated the gesture, which it said was in breach of the rules banning political protests at sports events.
Following the British team’s snub, ParalympicsGB reminded all athletes not to take part in any political protests or gestures during sporting events or opening ceremonies.
The Israeli team learnt of the protest only after the game, since they had been facing away from the British team when both countries’ anthems were played.
Ilay Yarhi, the Israeli wheelchair basketball player, said the British team’s gesture was “an attack on our dignity as players”.Yarhi said his team-mates “felt like they were bringing unrelated issues on to the court and humiliating us”. …
Lord Austin, the former Labour MP, said: “This hugely offensive gesture brings shame on the British team, whatever their motivation. Not only have these Paralympians betrayed the proud history of an international sporting movement that transcends borders, but they have also shown their ignorance about the diverse nature of Israeli society, reflected by a team in which Jewish and Arab players together strive for victory.
“The British basketball team must now apologise for their insulting behaviour and pledge that there will never be any repeat. Failure to do so should call into question the future of taxpayer funding for the team.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Irish folk group The Mary Wallopers have had their set cut at the Victorious Festival in Portsmouth after leading chants of “Free Palestine” and unfurling a Palestinian flag on stage, according to the Irish Sun.
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This is what we’ve become. Sad, little people trying to preach to the rest of the world what is right and what is wrong and looking like total nobs for it.
It’s all just so childish.
If you look at the tennis rankings, when a Russian player comes up, they just don’t mention the country. As if it didn’t exist.
Even at the height of the cold war, we acknowledged the existence of thr USSR and the eastern bloc. And we engaged with them.
Now we think we can can just deal with people and countries we don’t.like with passive aggressiveness. Pretending they don’t exist. Sort of the way teenage girls ostracise another girl.
That’s what we’ve become as a society. A bunch of pathetic, nasty little teenage girls.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to claim that that’s something “we have become as society.” The racism pyramid recently published here featured apolitical beliefs as condemnable property at the lowest level, tellingly labeled indifference. And this communicates something about the wokhurts: They’re true totalitarians. Insofar there’s an area of life which hasn’t yet been invaded by politics, they consider this a problem which has to be remedied to move the world towards perfection. As there are many areas of life which are genuinely unrelated to politics, the natural outcome is acts of displaced symbolic politics everywhere.
You call that childish. But someone who’s actually lived in a totalitarian society for longer than we all have during COVID might regard this as something much more insidious/ threatening (conjecture, because I haven’t myself).
I watched the film Exodus (1960) yesterday evening. The part where the Arab and the young Karen are buried together was particularly moving.
May those who seek to divide us along arbitrary lines rot in hell.
I’ve looked up the movie in Wikipedia because you mentioned it here. Among other things, it features (covertly) gay Nazis anally raping Jews in Auschwitz (as story that’s told by someone). Considering this, is there something that’s so obviously extremely crude, sensationalist propaganda that you think you’d recognize it as such?
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I don’t actually understand what you’ve written. And it’s possible I missed it, but I don’t recall the detail you refer to. Have you watched the film yourself yet, RW?
Is it possible you stumbled across some weird porn movie, instead of the 1960 film I am writing about, which was inspired by the book of the same name by Leon Uris?! It starred Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint.
And I am aware of propaganda. But the film is very fair, in that it points out the bad and good behaviour on both sides, in particular the violent actions of some Jews against the British.
What about looking this up yourself before assuming that I must have made a seriously stupid mistake?
Karen’s young beau, Dov Landau, joins the Irgun a radical pro-Zionist militant group led by Akiva Ben Canaan, Ari’s uncle. Akiva first interrogates Dov, forcing his confession to being a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz where he learned bombing skills and that Nazi guards sodomized him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_(1960_film)
It’s important to take the time into account: 1960. This was before laws against homosexuality were abolished. I’m aware of quite a bit of concentation camp eyewitness prose (Kogon, Der SS-Staat) but that’s a claim not even the people who collaborated to create this book made.
From the same Wikipedia article (I didn’t read this before writing the original comment):
Gideon Bachmann, who was present in Palestine in 1947, wrote in Film Quarterly (published by University of California press) that the film was “dishonest” and propaganda designed to be “the best promotion Israel ever had.”
Why don’t you believe them?
Why would I believe a bunch of Hollywood-clowns with no first-hand experience of anything making an obvious and seriously crude propaganda movie more than a group of German communists and Jews collaborating with Jewish officers of the US army to write the definite book on the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp system?
These people ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Whatever opinion about the policy of the government of Israel wrt to Gaza someone might hold in private, members of paralympic sports teams from Israel are certainly not responsible for that.
“The Israeli team learnt of the protest only after the game, since they had been facing away from the British team when both countries’ anthems were played.”
Why were the Israeli team FACING AWAY FROM THE BRITISH TEAM when both countries anthems were played? I don’t understand that.
They appear to be sitting in two rows, both facing the front, with the British team in the second row.
Well, now that you’ve explained it, I’ve had another look at the photo, and see that you are right. Thank you, because I genuinely did not understand.
If they are going to turn their backs, at least they should do it consistently:
On Britain and the US for the Iraqi war,
On most (all ?) of the Islamic countries for their human rights abuses,
On Canada for the persecution of the truckers,
and so on and so forth.
Basically, they might as well turn their backs during every country’s anthem.
I agree with Lord Austin – pull the plug and tell them to swivel, that should focus their tiny brains.
I think it’s more appropriate to take disciplinary actions against the people involved with this and ensure that something like this is never repeated. It’s likely that not all disabled basketball players in Britain are d***heads.
Deeply, deeply shameful…
Defund them. If they want a sponsor, they could always ask their heroes in Hamas.
If they loose their funding and challenge the decision in the courts they won’t have a leg to stand on.
Very droll…
Does anyone actually care what the British paralympian basketball team does, whether sporting or political?
They represent Britain when they are playing, they need to be taught some manners.
Exactly. This is not only grossly impolite, I’d go so far – and I don’t use the term lightly – to call it a symbolic genocide: It’s declaration that citizens of Israel are un-people not worthy to partake in activities of real people, completely regardless of who they actually are and that they have no more direct influence on the actions of the government of Israel than anybody else has on the government of any state he happens to be a citizen of.
You mean turn their wheels. Just sayin 🤔
Ridiculous. Could we have a full cultural and demographic breakdown of this group please?
Not very British!! in more ways than one
As far as I’m oncerned this is a disgusting action, it is utterly reprehensible to those whom lost their lives Oct 7th, to those still held hostage, this is a battle that has to be won for thr sake of humanity, or Hamas will proceed with their plan to wipe out all non musims, and these athletes are merely condoning Hamas’s actions, should be ashamed of themselves.
None of these revolting people should ever represent this country in sport again.
Being disabled doesn’t give you an automatic right to be a nobhead!
I always think it’s a shame to bring politics into sport. If they really feel that strongly, maybe refusing to play them at all would be a more appropriate stance.
I still want to know why the Netanyahu War Cabinet ignored the warnings before October 7th that Hamas was practicing the attack, and why regular border inspection on that morning was suspended and why subsequent IDF actions followed the Hannibal Protocol. Maybe the disabled athletes were acting as they did because they too want an explanation.
Shame on every one of them!