Israeli athletes receive threats in Paris as tensions simmer over Gaza

PARIS (AP) — Israel’s Olympic team said some athletes have received threats as they compete in Paris amid larger tensions over Palestinian deaths during the war in Gaza and the threat of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East.

Yael Arad, president of the Israeli National Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that team members had received “centralized” threats meant to generate “psychological terror” in athletes, without giving further details.

Last week, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into emailed death threats to Israeli athletes, and the national cybercrime agency is looking into the leak of some Israeli athletes’ personal data online, which has since been taken down. Prosecutors also launched an inquiry into inciting racial hated after Israeli athletes received ‘’discriminatory gestures” during an Israel-Paraguay match.

Tom Reuveny, a 24-year-old Israeli athlete who won a gold in wind surfing over the weekend, was among those who said he’s received threats. Politics “should be put aside” during the Games, he told AP, speaking during a memorial Tuesday of the deadly attack that targeted the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. The Sept. 5, 1972, assault by the Palestinian group Black September killed 11 Israelis and a police officer.

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“I don’t think any politics should be involved in sport, especially in the Olympic Games,” Reuveny said. “Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics involved — not in the Games — of the people who don’t want us to compete and don’t want us to be here. I’ve gotten quite a few messages and threats.”

While Israel has called for the Olympics to remain a neutral space, the Palestinian delegation has used the Games as a way to generate conversation about the day-to-day struggles of those in Gaza. The Israel-Hamas war has claimed more than 39,000 Palestinian lives, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

“The thing that really hurts me is that people are looking at Palestinians as just numbers now. The number of people that died. The number of people displaced,” Palestinian American Olympic swimmer Valerie Tarazi told the AP on Sunday.

“As athletes, we’re here just as everyone else. We want to compete. As people, we have lives. ... We want to live in our homes, just like everyone else in the world,” she added.

The world is coming together in Paris at a moment of global political upheaval, multiple wars, historic migration and a deepening climate crisis, all issues that have risen to the forefront of conversation in the Olympics.

Tensions across the Middle East are spiking following the killings last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas’ top political leader in Iran, in suspected Israeli strikes. Both groups are backed by Iran.

Tuesday’s memorial of the 1972 attack underscored how the Olympics have frequently found themselves caught up in international crises that aren’t directly related to sport.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach called it “the darkest day in Olympic history” and “an attack on the culture of peace that the Olympic games promote.”

French authorities have cited the Munich attack as among reasons for heightened security for the Paris Olympics, and Israeli athletes are under 24-hour guard by a French police unit.

Palestine’s Olympic team has demanded that the IOC ban Israel from competing in Paris, alleging the country has violated the Olympic charter. Last week, the Palestinian delegation said it had not received a response from the IOC and that it planned to take its plea to higher sports courts.

Israel’s team has been met by jeers in stadiums during the country’s national anthem, and athletes have arrived to events under a heavy police escort, including riot police vans.

“It’s not easy to be an Israeli athlete in the international arena these days,” said Arad, head of Israel’s Olympic committee. The Olympics is “a bridge between people, between countries, between religions. And we are here to compete.”

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Associated Press journalists Megan Janetsky and Alex Turnbull contributed to this report.