Basketball’s EuroLeague continues next week, starting the second half of the regular season, with Maccabi Tel Aviv visiting Barcelona on January 6 for round 20 of 38. The arrival of the Israeli team has been met with fierce opposition in the city, and 150 social, labor and political organizations in Catalonia have asked for the cancellation of the match in a manifiesto.
The match, like many other matches from Israeli clubs in Europe, will be played behind closed doors, a decision taken after tickets had already been sold. Barça decided to have the match behind closed doors, promising refunds, to prevent riots. But the manifiest asks for te cancellation of the match altogether, promoted by the platform “Prou Complicitat amb Israel” (Enough of complicity with Israel).
They claim that allowing the game to be played “normalizes the genocide against the Palestinian people” and uses sport as a tool to obscure human rights violations, claiming that sport cannot be neutral. Barça Basket fan clubs have also asked for the exclusion of Israeli teams from EuroLeague. A demonstration has also been called for January 6 at the same time as the match.
EuroLeague was one of the first competitions to allow Israeli clubs to return to their home stadiums in Israel, after the fragile peace treaty signed between Israel and Hamas, which caused discomfort to visiting teams from the rest of Europe.
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