UAE Violates Spirit of International Cooperation and Sportsmanship

This week the United Arab Emirates (UAE) refused to grant entry to Shahar Peer, an Israeli female tennis champion, to compete in the Barclay’s Dubai Tennis Championship.

The UAE offered this explanation: “We do not wish to politicize spots, but we have to be sensitive to recent events in the region and not alienate or put at risk the players and the many tennis fans of different nationalities that we have here in the UAE.”

Of course that’s lame, because if the UAE were dedicated to the spirit of international cooperation and sportsmanship that such contests supposedly embody, it would take pains to beef up security and welcome Peer. What’s less clear is whether the excuse offered above is complete bull—- or whether they really are concerned about security.

At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists under orders from Yassir Arafat (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, please recall), introduced the world to modern terrorism by murdering 11 Israeli athletes. The world was appropriately appalled, but soon enough began the process of rationalizing this clear-cut brutality and insane prejudice by buying the terrorists’ tortured “logic”: surely the Palestinians would not have perpetrated a cold-blooded terrorist attack against civilian athletes were they, the Palestinians, not in reality the victims. Of course, not everyone bought this balonie; some saw the prejudice and viciousness for what it was. But perhaps because it was in actuality so indefensible, its pure evil so hard to grasp, many others began to rationalize it, perhaps subconsciously out of Stockholm-syndrome-esque fear (let us side with those who are most brutal in hopes we will not become the next victims).

The fact that such rationalizing did occur is evidenced by the growing worldwide support in subsequent decades for the Palestinian cause, in direct proportion to the violence perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists. It was only after September 11, when American civilians became the victims of Islamist terrorism, that more Americans began to grasp what Israel has dealt with for the past six decades: irrational hatred and violence masquerading as eternal victimhood. The fact that many ordinary Palestinans do suffer is another facet of this large-scale manipulation, allowing some Palestinian “leaders” to manipulate world opinion via terrorism.

Anyway, whether the UAE banned Peer out of simple prejudice, or did so because its authorities actually feared violence, the bottom line comes down to prejudice. What a shame that more than 35 years after Munich so many of Israel’s neighbors refuse to accept the simple fact of her existence.

Kudos to Ken Solomon, chairman and chief executive of the Tennis Channel, for his decision not to air the Barclay’s Dubai Tennis Championship in protest of the UAE’s decision.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on February 21, 2009 at 1:00 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: human-rights, Israel, media, Palestinians. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>