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The Olympics should allow the entire world to come together, put aside politics and tensions and celebrate incredible feats of athleticism.
But the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris have become yet another stage for the antisemites of the world, especially the Iranian regime, to demonize Israel.
During a Saturday men’s soccer match between Israel and Paraguay, protesters chanted “Heil Hitler” at the Israeli team, performed Nazi salutes and displayed a sign reading “Genocide Olympics.”
A similar demonstration occurred during Israel’s match against Mali.
The threat extends beyond the stadium: Israel’s National Cyber Directorate recently found that Iranian hackers created fake social-media channels that published personal information about Israeli Olympic delegates and sent them threatening messages.
Against this backdrop, Iran’s foreign ministry viciously criticized France for giving Israel’s Olympic athletes extra security, charging that protecting “the Apartheid & terrorist Zionist regime’s convoy” gave “legitimacy to the child killers.”
”They do not deserve to be present at the Paris Olympics because of the war against the innocent people of Gaza,” the state agency declared on X.
Few have called to ban Iran from the games, despite its government’s oppression of women, its violence against political dissidents at home and abroad, its supplying of weapons to Russia during the Ukraine invasion and its support for terrorist proxy groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
Yet Israel that has consistently faced calls for bans and boycotts, at the Olympics and elsewhere, now in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
All of it evokes terrifying memories of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, when 11 Israeli competitors and coaches were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Indeed, 15 of the 88 Israeli team members in Paris have received threats of a repeat of that horrific attack.
It is Iranian policy to ban competing against, or even to showing basic human warmth to, Israeli athletes.
“Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal,” said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 2021.
To avoid that, Iranian athletes are expected to deliberately lose to Israelis or to withdraw from competitions against them.
The Iranian regime is brutal to athletes who act against its dictates and desires.
In 2022, after the Iranian national soccer team abstained from singing the national anthem in solidarity with protesters, the regime threatened their family members.
Iranian weightlifter Mostafa Rojaei received a lifetime ban from the sport because he shook hands with an Israeli competitor.
Athletes do not flee normal countries to seek asylum elsewhere, but Iranian athletes do.
As an Iranian Jew who survived the Oct. 7 attack at the Nova Music Festival that was orchestrated by Tehran, I know the lengths Iran will go to in order to disrupt unity and inflict terror.
Saeid Mollaei, a judoka who refused to return to Iran after being ordered to withdraw from a competition to avoid facing an Israeli, was granted asylum in Germany.
The president of Iran’s Judo Federation called Mollaei a “fake athlete.”
Water polo player Amir Dehdari, who was flogged after refusing to meet with Khamenei, now lives in exile in Belgium. Boxer Omid Ahmadi Safa sought asylum in Italy because he had taken a selfie in proximity to the Israeli team — the horror.
The regime executed wrestler Navid Afkari on suspicious charges in 2021 and sentenced soccer player Amir Nasr-Azadani to 26 years in prison on similarly trumped-up accusations.
In reality, they had committed the “crime” of protesting the regime.
It speaks volumes that the Refugee Olympic Team, which consists of 37 refugee athletes from 11 different countries, has 14 athletes from Iran — nearly 40% of the total.
The problem is not the people of Iran, who are prisoners in their own country.
The problem is the regime that imprisons them, the standard-bearer of modern-day antisemitism.
Let’s salute the courage of Iranian dissidents and protesters, including their dissident athletes.
And let’s unite against a regime that forces its athletes to be ambassadors of hatred.
Natalie Sanandaji is a survivor of the Oct. 7 Nova music festival massacre and a public-affairs officer with the Combat Antisemitism Movement.