After Russia went into Ukraine, Russians were effectively outlawed from international sports.
The International Olympic Committee banned athletes deemed too close to the military, and Russian teams were expelled from FIFA, UEFA, and FIBA.
Russian athletes were excluded from competing internationally in archery, badminton, baseball, basketball, biathlons, canoeing, chess, curling, cycling, gymnastics, Formula One, field hockey, ice hockey, judo, pentathlons, rowing, rugby, sailing, skating, skiing, soccer, surfing, swimming, taekwondo, tennis, triathlons, and volleyball.
Even the *International Cat Federation* issued a ban on Russia-affiliated felines, including Russian Blues, Peterbalds, and Siberian cats.
The handful of sports bodies which begrudgingly allowed Russian to participate again, now demand that Russians compete as ‘neutral athletes,’ and not display their flag or support their country’s military.
With Israel currently in its ninth month of genocide in Gaza, having killed as many as 186,000 Palestinians, how has the global athletic community responded?
So far, not a single body has blocked Israelis from competing.
The president of World Athletics, which currently prohibits Russian and Belarusian athletes, pushed back against banning Israelis, saying: “We’re not a political body… We remain politically neutral.”
Asked if the International Olympic Committee would consider a blocking Israeli athletes amid their ongoing genocide, IOC president Thomas Bach said: “No, there is no question about this.”
Russia, he said, “forced us into action by their invasion and their annexation of parts of Ukraine.”
No such declarations about Israel — which invaded Syria’s Golan Heights and Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms in 1978, forcibly annexed them in 1981, and has been militarily occupying them ever since.
Mike