Sports are politics by other means. Just look at the Paris 2024 Olympics, which, in light of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine and Israel’s aggressions in Gaza, promise to be the most politically charged Games since the cold war.
Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, maintains that the IOC must remain “politically neutral” to avoid “sport and athletes” from becoming “tools of politics”. But the IOC’s uneven response to bellicose atrocities carried out by Russia and Israel exposes a glaring double standard that’s firmly rooted in politics. While Russian Olympians must participate as “individual neutral athletes” in Paris, without their flag and national anthem, Israeli athletes are allowed to compete without restrictions.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has remarked that Russian athletes should not feel welcome in Paris, after declaring that they shouldn’t be able to participate at all. Meanwhile, “Sanctioning Israel in relation to the Olympic and Paralympic Games is out of the question”, she asserted. Pierre-Olivier Beckers-Vieujant, chair of the IOC’s Coordination Commission for Paris 2024, concurred: “It’s out of the question to imagine sanctions [on Israel] right now.”
To be sure, Russia and Israel are not identical situations: geopolitics doesn’t gift us with crisp facsimiles. The Paris Olympics are a complex political thicket where there are no easy answers. But a careful assessment of the IOC’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its public statements explaining why Russian athletes must compete in Paris as “individual neutral athletes”, veers toward the conclusion that similar standards ought to apply to Israel. Now is not the time for polemical pyrotechnics, but instead for the even-handed application of established standards.
One might think that the Olympic Charter, with its stated commitment to “social responsibility and respect for internationally recognised human rights and universal fundamental ethical principles”, might form a firm foundation for principled action. But the IOC has long ignored its own guiding principles, or conveniently circumscribed them “within the remit of the Olympic Movement”. This allowed the IOC to look away when China, host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, persecuted Uyghur Muslims, repressed Tibetans and squelched Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Sticking “within the remit of the Olympic Movement” spawns the selective ethics that have long plagued the IOC.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the IOC publicly lambasted Vladimir Putin. “Because war is the antithesis of the Olympic ideal,” stated IOC vice-president John Coates, “we condemn the acts of the Russian Federation. They have lost their right to membership of the international Olympic community.” But the IOC has yet to condemn Israel, despite rampant human-rights violations: the Israel Defense Forces have killed about 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the horrific attack by Hamas on October 7th, 2023; a UN special rapporteur on human rights has accused Israel of committing genocide; a European Union official contends that Gaza is experiencing famine and that Israel is weaponising starvation; children in Gaza are dying in droves.
However, none of that seems to matter to the IOC. Nor apparently does the IOC’s historical decision to exclude South Africa from the Olympics from 1964 to 1992 over its apartheid policies. Today, the self-proclaimed “supreme authority” of the Games does not seem bothered by what Amnesty International calls “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians”. Instead, it is only concerned with violations of the Olympic Truce and territorial incursions involving sports grounds.
The IOC has justified its exclusion of Russia on grounds that it violated the Olympic Truce, a symbolic resolution that the United Nations adopts in advance of each Games. Russia invaded Ukraine in the immediate wake of the Beijing 2022 Games during the Olympic Truce period. This line of reasoning does not apply to Israel since its response to Hamas’s attacks did not transpire during an Olympic period. But in reality, the Olympic Truce is pure-grade symbolism, more aspirational than actual. And its application has been spotty at best: the IOC never threatened the United States with violating the Olympic Truce when US military operations continued apace in Afghanistan and Iraq during multiple Olympic Games.
Crucially, the IOC also explained its decision by noting that Russia captured Ukrainian territory that included sports clubs. This, according to the IOC, “constitutes a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violates the territorial integrity of the [National Olympic Committee] of Ukraine”. And yet, Israel has also violated the territorial integrity of Palestine. In doing so, Israel has killed the Palestinian Olympic soccer coach, destroyed or damaged most football grounds across Gaza, and converted Yarmouk Stadium into an internment camp for Palestinian detainees. Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has proposed indefinite military control over Gaza, which, by definition, would include its mostly decimated sports grounds. And yet, the IOC has sat in conspicuous silence, even though it has officially recognised the Palestine Olympic Committee since 1993. The IOC president insists “there is no question” about Israeli participation in Paris.
Athletes from Russia who participate in Paris as neutrals are forbidden from actively supporting the war and cannot be “contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies”. For the sake of consistency, the same standard should apply to Israeli athletes and the Israel Defense Forces.
While the idea of having Israeli athletes participate as “individual neutral athletes” is sure to disappoint those demanding a total ban as well as those who will view any strictures on Israeli athletes as some sort of anti-Semitic plot hatched by Hamas enthusiasts, it allows the IOC to be even-handed in its application of its own stated standards.
The IOC’s pseudo-neutrality is a self-inflicted neutering that renders the group incapable of living up to the principles it ostensibly abides. Hiding behind a thin scrim of political neutrality means abdicating social responsibility. The IOC’s timeworn canard that politics and sports shouldn’t mix is not only outdated but also undercuts principled action and can even structure permission for barbarism. There is still time for the IOC to change course. Otherwise, it risks making the Paris 2024 Olympics a grim monument to hypocrisy.
Jules Boykoff is an American academic, author and former professional soccer player. He has written six books on the politics of the Olympics, including Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics and What Are the Olympics For?, and is a contributor to the New York Times and Guardian
