Paris Olympics 2024: A Media Frenzy on Bringing the Palestinian Cause Into Sports

Israel has become a point of contention at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Never mind that global events like the Olympics and Eurovision are supposed to transcend politics. After all, citizens are not their government.

But there is a necessity to bring attention to bias in the media on how both the Israeli and Palestinian teams at the Olympics are being covered — or maybe, not being covered.

How did @France24_en leave this out? The IOC allowed Team Palestine to wear shirts with rockets killing Gazan children at the Olympics, but denied Team Israel’s request for yellow ribbons in solidarity with hostages. https://t.co/6zEKUdqcH2 pic.twitter.com/tLops4JvCs

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 28, 2024

There is an International Olympic Committee (IOC) policy that anything deemed a political statement cannot be displayed during the opening or closing ceremonies, or during competitive events. Russia was banned from the games, and its athletes must compete under a different category.

In this AFP article, which centered around Team Palestine Olympic boxer Waseem Abu Sal’s display of solidarity with Gaza at the Olympic opening ceremony, they failed to include one crucial detail.

They wrote about the IOC approving Abu Sal’s request, but the Times of Israel reported that the IOC rejected Team Israel’s plea to wear yellow ribbon pins to bring awareness and show solidarity with hostages brutally taken by the Hamas terror group from Israel during the October 7 attacks, who are still being held.

Bombs dropped over a sunny sky as a child plays football — the powerful reference on the shirt worn by Palestine’s flag-bearer Waseem Abu Sal at the Olympics Opening Ceremony pic.twitter.com/N5WnYQPp7l

— Leyla Hamed (@leylahamed) July 26, 2024

Further, an article by the BBC entitled “The Palestinians heading to Paris to represent their people,” presents an interview with Palestinian Olympic swimmer Yazan al-Bawwab, who told the BBC, “We don’t have a pool in Palestine … We don’t have infrastructure.”

Al-Bawwab was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, and is perhaps unaware of Olympic training in Palestinian territories.

Reuters’ “pool gate,” as The Jerusalem Post referred to it, was put to rest back in 2016 by Tablet, and then by The Jerusalem Post, when then-editor Yaakov Katz went to the West Bank to investigate.

There are several half-Olympic-sized pools in the West Bank, he confirmed. Tablet editor Liel Leibovitz discovered there was even one in Gaza.

So why take this information at face value, BBC? A little investigation could do this piece some good.

Coverage of Team Palestine continues to use the angle of “representing their people in the shadow of war” across the board, while Team Israel’s coverage has been about whether or not they should have been banned and how the athletes are being protected by heavy security due to the controversy and threats to their lives.

Hopefully, the media and the general public can focus on sports from here on out, and not bring politics into it. It may seem difficult, but that’s the whole idea, right?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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