Sports Commissioner Glenn Micallef condemned the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and said the sporting world needs to speak up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to sports, I think there should be no space in sporting events for those who do not share our values,\u201d he told POLITICO without naming Israel directly, in response to a question as to whether the country should face sporting sanctions over the Gaza war. \u201cSport is a tool that we use to promote peace, through which we promote human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other hand, the sport movement is autonomous, and they make their own decisions,\u201d Micallef added. \u201cBut we have a duty and we have a responsibility to speak about these issues and to make our feelings known.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel launched its military assault on Gaza after the Hamas militant group\u2019s Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border raid, which killed 1,200 Israelis and other nationalities. More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, with hundreds of thousands more facing famine and disease and entire cities, from Khan Yunis to Rafah, reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n
The sporting world has seen repeated calls<\/a> to boycott Israel\u2019s participation in international competitions, from the Olympics to the World Cup, although such proposals have so far largely been<\/a> rejected.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest has also been lambasted, with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez on May 19 calling for the country to be excluded from such events. \u201cWe cannot allow double standards, not even in culture,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sports Commissioner Glenn Micallef condemned the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and said the sporting world needs to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,23664,837,1815,7163,1814,18111,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-132168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-glenn-micallef","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-israel-hamas-war","14":"tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","15":"tag-palestine","16":"tag-society-and-culture","17":"tag-sport"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114571869241680287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}