“Netanyahu, murderer”; “they were hospitals, not military bases”; “the criminal embassy must be closed”… These and other slogans were chanted this Tuesday night in the center of Madrid, before the Euroleague basketball match between Real Madrid and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Pro-Palestinian groups protest against Israel’s participation in international sports competitions. “The Zionist state uses sport to cleanse its image.” This is the conclusion reached by the BDS Madrid movement, the pro-Palestinian group that has called to gather this Tuesday around the Wizink Center, recently renamed Movistar Arena, along with other environmental, feminist and anti-militarist platforms and movements that have been echoed this concentration that has been denied by the government delegation an hour before starting.
The visit of the sports team has already fueled tensions this year in Vitoria, where a week ago another civil platform demanded that the match scheduled for February 7 be suspended. Palestinerekin Elkartasuna raised its voice against this new meeting, since in January of last year Maccabi played in the Basque Country and required a police deployment next to the hotel where the team members were staying, to guarantee their safety given the criticism expressed. in the days before.
“We are here to denounce the complicity of the Government of Pedro Sánchez with the Zionists who are perpetrating a genocide.” The secretary general of Podemos and deputy, Ione Belarra, stated during the rally after the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, refused to veto entry to the Maccabi in Tel Aviv: “We asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs to prevent the entry of this team and also their fans and they have not done it because with one hand they try to make it seem that they are doing something to stop this genocide and with the other they allow ships loaded with weapons to pass through Spain and maintain all diplomatic relations and “economic relations with the terrorist State of Israel.”
For the deputy, the celebration of this match is “one more example of how the Government has been unable to break relations with the genocidaires: there is a basketball match washing the face of a band of aggressive, dangerous and violent Zionists who have already generated riots advocating genocide in other countries, like the Netherlands, and it will not be with our silence.”
This Monday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured that he was not contemplating preventing the entry to Spain of the players of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team and its fans: “I think we have to leave sport aside.” the minister responded to Podemos’s request.
In statements to this medium, Hania Faydi, member of the BDS Madrid platform, the international campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, regrets the response of the foreign representative of Spain and remembers how: “At the time, Albares already said that it would be necessary to review Russia’s involvement [tras la invasión a Ucrania en 2022]in sporting and cultural events. Fifteen months after the massacre in Gaza and the Palestinian population that has already left more than 46,000 dead, Faydi, on behalf of the BDS, responds to Albares: ”These players have participated in the army. And in the army, what the occupation soldiers do is torture, murder and oppress the Palestinian population. That’s why we are here.” “It cannot be that Israel, which has been committing genocide for 15 months but is not reviewed [su participación en los eventos deportivos]“.
This Tuesday’s rally takes place a few days before the protests called for this weekend in different Spanish capitals.
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