Sports
News about athletes, games and competitions around the world
“Politics and sport are never a good mix,” said IPC President Andrew Parsons in a statement. “We are disappointed that Israeli athletes would not have been allowed to compete in Malaysia.”
“When a host country excludes athletes from a particular nation, for political reasons, then we have absolutely no alternative but to look for a new championships’ host,” said IPC President Andrew Parsons.
Malaysia was officially stripped of the right to host a Paralympic swimming championship by the International Paralympic Committee after issuing a ban on Israeli athletes.
The Jewish state slammed Malaysia’s ban on Israeli participation in the Muslim-majority nation’s hosting of international sporting events, citing the choice was motivated by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s “rabid anti-Semitism.”
California-based Golden West Food Group purchased the cleats, and the company is donating the funds to Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston and Pittsburgh’s Jewish Federation.
The victory marks Bracha Deutsch’s fourth marathon. She competed in the Tel Aviv Marathon while seven months pregnant and began training for the trials just three years ago.
The event, to be held in the Malaysian city of Kuching, is crucial as the outcome will affect the competition of the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo, which will host more than 600 swimmers from 70 nations.
“The innocence this word once carried, as a simple translation for Jew, has long disappeared, and we must be extremely conscious of the anti-Semitic connotation it now bears,” said said World Jewish Congress CEO and executive vice president Robert Singer.
European sports teams have long used anti-Semitic and Holocaust themes as a way to degrade rival teams.
Supporters of the Belgian team Club Brugge were recorded singing a song about Jews “burning.” The supporters sang, “My father was part of a commando, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews because Jews burn the best.”
New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft visited the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh to pay his respects to the 11 Jewish victims of the Oct. 27 shooting there before his team played the Steelers on Sunday. (The Steelers won 17-10.)
“I’m trying to find if God exists,” he added. “I want to deal with people who are smarter than me.”
