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Paris Olympics 2024: A Media Frenzy on Bringing the Palestinian Cause Into Sports
Paris 2024 Olympics – Football – Men’s Group D – Israel vs Paraguay – Parc des Princes, Paris, France – July 27, 2024. Israel fans outside the stadium before the match. Photo: REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
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.
The post Paris Olympics 2024: A Media Frenzy on Bringing the Palestinian Cause Into Sports first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.