- It is evident that ‘a double standard appears to be in play,’ Boykoff tells Anadolu

ISTANBUL

When Russia launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) took all of four days to recommend a ban on athletes from Russia.

The IOC move was just as swift as the Western world’s vociferous condemnation of Russia, and also targeted Moscow’s key ally Belarus, advising international sports bodies and sports event organizers not to “invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions.”

The decision was taken with a “heavy heart” and aimed at protecting “the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants,” the IOC Executive Board said in a statement on Feb. 28, 2022.

The IOC statement asserted that the “Olympic Movement is united in its mission to contribute to peace through sport” and “committed to fair competitions for everybody without any discrimination.”

That was the first step in the IOC’s sanctions on Russian and Belarusian athletes, which has since barred them from competing in the Olympics under their countries’ flags, instead designating them as neutral and independent contestants – first for the 2022 Winter Olympics and now for the Summer Games starting in Paris this July.

Given the strong sense of justice and peace the IOC professed in its statement about Russia and Belarus, many around the world are now asking what it plans to do about Israel, which has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians as it wages a catastrophically deadly war on Gaza.

The committee’s answer, so far at least, has been clear: nothing.

For sports historians and experts such as Jules Boykoff, the contradiction is hard to miss and it is evident that “a double standard appears to be in play.”

“History does not present identical-twin moments, but the situation is more and more resembling the situation that led to the IOC forcing Russia to participate as neutral athletes,” Boykoff, an American author and academic whose research areas include the Olympics, told Anadolu.

“The IOC’s approach to ignore the situation places its selective morality on full display and throws into questions the group’s commitment to the high-minded ideals it claims to abide.”

Peter Alegi, a professor of history at Michigan State University in the US, also called out the evident “hypocrisy” in the IOC’s stance, pointing out that there seems to be an “idea that certain rules apply only to certain countries.”

“Certainly … there are sanctions on Russian athletes and on the Russian state in ways that Israel has not seen,” he told Anadolu.

Restrictions on Russia

In October 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) for including as its members regional sports organizations of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia – Ukrainian territories illegally annexed by Moscow.

The committee, however, kept in place its January 2023 decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals, just as they are forced to in international tennis competitions.

At the Paris Olympics, an athlete with a Russian or Belarusian passport will be referred to as an “Individual Neutral Athlete,” abbreviated as AIN from the French translation “Athletes Individuels Neutres.”

The IOC has specified that there will be no reference to either country at the Games, saying in a statement that there will be “no flag, anthem, colors or any other identifications whatsoever of Russia or Belarus.”

“The decision by the IOC to force Russian athletes to participates as ‘individual neutral athletes’ is the culmination of numerous major infractions on the part of Russia, from the 2014 doping scandal to multiple violations of the Olympic Truce,” said Boykoff, who in a recent article declared the upcoming Olympics as the “most politically charged games since the Cold War.”

One of the reasons for the ROC’s eventual suspension, he added, was that the Russian body had started to “control sports grounds in Ukraine after these areas were taken over by the Russian military.”

Linking that back to Israel’s assault on Palestinians, he said: “If you look at Gaza, sports grounds there have been destroyed. Yarmouk Stadium has been used as an internment camp. Meanwhile, there are calls in Israel from prominent politicians to take over full control of Gaza.”

On the push to expel Israel from the Paris Olympics, Boykoff believes that these calls “will only increase the closer we get to the Games.”

‘Contradiction needs to be highlighted’

Calls for Israel’s expulsion from the Paris Olympics are coming from far and wide, not just limited to pro-Palestine activists and organizations such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In France, there have been protests outside the Paris Olympics headquarters, while French lawmakers have written to the IOC, demanding that Israel be banned and its athletes forced to participate as neutrals.

The IOC, though, remains unmoved, with its head Thomas Bach saying in March that there is “no question” about Israel’s participation, comments that have also been repeated by other IOC officials.

IOC lawyers also shot down comparisons between Russia and Israel during a January hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sports, saying there was “no evidence that Israel has been recognizing Palestinian sporting organizations as its members.”

However, Alegi, the history professor, emphasized that sports and politics are inextricably linked.

“The way in which sporting organizations, and particularly Western nations, have responded has been dramatically different ... I think that double standards … hypocrisy, or at the very least a contradiction, needs to be highlighted,” he said.

One wonders if all of this is “simply because Israel has very powerful backers that Russia doesn’t have,” he said.

“I think it’s part of the global geopolitics that we have in the world,” he added.