Comments on: Dubai Denies the WTA (semi-regretfully) Complies

By: themiddle

themiddle — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:32:16 +0000

Got it, Tori.

By: Tori

Tori — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:58:52 +0000

Why do you allow that idiot to hijack every other thread? The comments section is no fun anymore

By: Pastaman

Pastaman — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:07:39 +0000

first, about the recent incident: i heard that the international tennis channel refuses to broadcast all games from that tournament, effectively boycotting it.
secondly, about the gazan football team not being allowed to exit gaza – not true. they were not allowed to ENTER ISRAEL, even if to pass to the west bank. if they wanted they could have gone through the border with egypt. oh, yeah, did you all suddenly forget gaza has a border with egypt aswell?

By: froylein

froylein — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:07:03 +0000

I wasn’t aware there was an updated edition of the “Protocols” out… It shows that uneducated fools can easily be tricked into believing anything.

By: froylein

froylein — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:52:14 +0000

CTC, fact is you’re a bad Muslim and as little caring for your fellow believers or humanity in general as I’m for Mao’s belly button.

Find yourself a different playground if the swings here are too high for you.

By: themiddle

themiddle — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:14:34 +0000

Actually Mufti, it’s not the same at all and it’s not a matter of two wrongs. Dubai has no security concerns and this move is purely political. The Israeli moves were triggered by security concerns as you can see by the fact that the Palestinian players do go to international tournaments regularly. It’s not that they disallow Gazan players from playing. The opposite seems to be true with the exception happening during particular security situations.

By: grandmuffti

grandmuffti — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:03:38 +0000

We’re not special, OCO, it’s just a simple regular matter of two wrongs not making a right — Dubai can deny entry to anyone they want and Israel can deny visas as they see fit – but it it’s a shame to not let Gazan soccer players not play Muffti doesn’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to Israeli players.

Just as Muffti think it would be a shame if Israel put future bans on Palestinians from competing in response to Dubai not letting in an Israeli player for political reasons, even if by your tit-for-tat reasoning it would be justified.

By: themiddle

themiddle — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:42:13 +0000

Muffti, here is the Ha’aretz article, reported by Reuters, about the incident you’re describing:

Soccer / Palestinian soccer team laments Gaza travel ban

By Reuters

The head of the Palestinian Football Association said his national team’s no-show at an Asian Cup qualifier against hosts Singapore yesterday was due to Israel’s refusal to allow players to travel from Gaza.

Ahmed al-Afifi said the fixture had to be canceled because players making up most of the team could not travel through the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt. Another three players, Palestinian expatriates, were to have traveled separately.

He said Israel had also refused to allow team members to take an alternative route via Israel and the West Bank to Jordan for their onward journey to Singapore. They had planned to travel to Singapore on November 12.

The Israel Defense Forces denied the allegation, saying Rafah was open to the team at the time of their request to travel abroad. But a military spokesman confirmed that Erez, a Gaza border crossing used by Palestinians to enter Israel, had been closed due to security concerns.

Afifi said the Palestinian FA had appealed to world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, which he had urged to reschedule the match.

“Israel has refused to allow the team to pass through the Erez crossing to travel to Jordan and from there to Singapore but FIFA insisted that the game must be held on time,” Afifi told reporters in Gaza.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt has been closed intermittently since June 25, when Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and abducted another in a cross-border attack from Gaza.

Palestinian national team captain Saeb Jundeya said he was disappointed. “I had assured all my neighbors and people who asked me whether the game would be held on time that we would travel, but today I have to tell them that we were unable to make it because the occupation (Israel) did not allow it,” he said.

haaretz.com/ha...

By: themiddle

themiddle — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:26:11 +0000

Actually, it took 5 minutes to understand what happened with your Palestinian soccer player, Ziad Al Kourd. As the Guardian, a newspaper whose criticism of Israel goes far and wide, tells us in this article guardian.co.uk... “After last month’s suicide bombings in the Israeli town of Beersheba the prospect of the absent Gaza five joining the squad all but evaporated.” It appears we’re talking about 2004 in the pre-rocket era when the Palestinians were still very busy trying to blow up Israeli civilians and Israel was fighting to stop them. They closed borders and crossings and in fact, they also destroyed houses that were near the tunnel smuggling routes, as was Al Kourd’s.

This had nothing to do with sports.

You can dispute whether Al Kourd was fairly stopped or whether his home was fairly targeted, but you can’t say that this had anything to do with trying to stop sports or boycott sports. In fact, Al Kourd had just returned from playing abroad.

You were given an inch, took a foot, and got it wrong.

By: oh come on

oh come on — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:17:36 +0000

atually it does muffti, if israel can prevent palestinians from playing, why the fuck cant dubai prevent an israeli from ENTERING dubai?

oh right, you are special blah blah blah