The National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) today called on Iran and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to be banned from the Olympics.
High ranking Iranian officials reportedly instructed Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei to throw his semi-final match at the recent 2019 World Judo Championships in Tokyo in order to ensure that he would not have to face an Israeli competitor in the final. To his credit, Mollaei fled to Germany and stated that his days of competing for Iran are over.
The head of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, is reported to have threatened to ban Iran from taking part in the Olympics as a result of the incident. Vizer reportedly told Iran that International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach supported his proposed ban.
The PA has repeatedly failed to condemn the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics Games in Munich, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes in a brutal terrorist attack. In fact, Fatah, which is headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has praised the attack and called it a “heroic operation.” In addition, Abbas dedicated a building at Jericho’s Istiqlal University in honor of Khalil Al-Wazir Abu Jihad, a terrorist who was the chief architect behind the massacre in Munich. Abbas himself reportedly played a role in financing the deadly Olympics attack.
“With a long history of unsportsmanlike conduct in an arena where sportsmanship is supposed to be sacrosanct, Iran has relinquished its right to participate in the Olympic Games,” said NCYI President Farley Weiss. “By repeatedly instructing its athletes to purposefully lose sporting events so they will not have to compete against Israeli athletes, Iran has injected bigotry, anti-Semitism and intolerance into the international sports world and should face the consequences for their heinous and anti-Semitic acts. There is no room for this type of reprehensible behavior at the Olympic Games.”
“Like Iran, the Palestinian Authority has tainted the Olympics through its ongoing refusal to formally apologize for the 1972 massacre in Munich and through its incomprehensible glorification of the despicable terrorists who carried out the deadly act of terror,” Weiss added. “Coupled with its outrageous ‘Pay to Slay’ program, through which it provides financial remuneration to terrorists, the PA has fundamentally relinquished its rights to take part in the Olympics. Until such time as the PA issues a formal apology for the 1972 terrorist attack in Munich and pays reparations to the families of the victims, they should not be permitted to field an Olympic team.”