The road to Paris was not a straightforward one for the Palestinian competitors. Only one of the eight Palestinian athletes going to this year’s Games qualified under the official criteria, the other seven having received special invitations from the IOC.
Ouriel Ohayon dug into this on X/Twitter, He found that the only member of the team to actually qualify was Omar Yaser Ismail, in taekwondo.
Ismail was born in the UAE.
Only two of the eight Palestinian Olympic team members were born in or live in the territories; none of those qualified for the team by their own merits.
Typical is Valerie Tarazi, who looks whiter than most Jews. She was born in Illinois to an Orthodox Christian family whose "family roots" are in Gaza, whatever that means.
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She makes no bones about the fact that she is there for propaganda purposes. She says she's there to “speak up for the people who can’t.”
Which brings up the question, how does one get "invited" to the Olympics?
As far as who is allowed to participate, the International Olympics Committee largely allows the national Olympics committees to decide on who is considered a "citizen" or not, only cracking down on egregious examples of "passport shopping" athletes. Since Palestinian law considers all descendants of Palestinians to be Palestinian, it appears that this part of the program is legitimate.
The real question is why there are seven Palestinian athletes who were "invited" by the IOC.
In general, the IOC has the right to invite athletes who wouldn't qualify when they come from small countries with underdeveloped Olympics programs, in order to maximize the number of nations participating.
But the Palestinian delegation is eight strong, with one athlete who actually qualified. There are 86 countries with fewer athletes than "Palestine" attending the Games. Four countries (Belize, Liechtenstein, Nauru and Somalia) have only one representative.
Why would the IOC invite such a large number, when 41% of all national Olympics teams have smaller delegations?
Why should there be eight athletes from "Palestine" with only one of them qualifying, when Tanzania has only seven athletes all of whom qualified? Isn't that an insult to the smaller countries and territories who actually did qualify or who received far fewer invitations?
The reason appears to be politics. The IOC agrees with Jibril Rajoub, terrorist-supporting head of the Palestinian Olympics committee, who has worked hard for years to politicize Palestinian sport and use it to demonize Israel and expel Israel from international competitions. Indeed, Palestinian boxer Waseem Abu Sal wore a shirt showing children being bombed for the opening ceremony - another violation of Olympics rules that the IOC is overlooking.
Gaza's dominance of the news seems to be the reason the IOC wants to bend over backwards to maximize Palestinian participation in the Games. way beyond what they deserve. Instead of promoting Olympics ideals, this cheapens the value of every single other athlete from every other country.
