A hard-left French politician has sparked outrage after saying that Israeli athletes were not welcome at the Paris Olympics.
Thomas Portes, an MP for the radical-left France Unbowed party (LFI), encouraged protest against the Israeli presence at the Games.
Portes told an anti-Israel rally in Paris on Saturday: “We are just a few days away from an international event to be held in Paris, the Olympic Games. And I’m here to say that no, the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris.
“Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Olympic Games in Paris. We have to use this deadline and all the levers we have to mobilise.”
Head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Yonathan Arfi, condemned Portes's comments as “irresponsible”.
Writing on X, Arfi accused Portes of “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes, already the most threatened in the Olympic Games” and recalled the 1972 Munich Olympics where 11 Israeli athletes were “murdered by Palestinian terrorists”.
But Portes doubled down on his comments, telling a Parisian newspaper that “France’s diplomats should pressure the International Olympic Committee to bar the Israeli flag and anthem, as is done for Russia”.
“It’s time to end the double standard,” Portes said.
Portes's comments have been criticised by politicians from the left and right of the French political spectrum.
Socialist MP Jerome Guedj wrote, “Of course, Israeli athletes are welcome, like all sportspeople from all over the world. Not for who they are, but for what they do.”
The centre-right mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, demanded that LFI be investigated: “I request that dissolution proceedings be initiated against LFI and, in the meantime, the removal of all public aid against this party and its members who have definitively ostracised themselves from the nation,” he said.
Marxist politician, Jérôme Legavre, meanwhile, came to Portes's defence: “The relentlessness against Thomas Portes is intolerable.... All the controversy unleashed against him has in reality only one objective: to try to erase and make invisible the fact that for more than nine months a genocide has been under way.”
France is on high security alert and nearly 45,000 security personnel will be on duty this Friday as the Games open.
Organising committee president Tony Estanguet said that “security was the number one priority for Paris 2024,” according to Le Monde.
The committee has confirmed that “unprecedented” steps will be implemented to secure the Games, with thousands of police, gendarmes, soldiers and private security agents.
Israel is sending armed Shin Bet agents to Paris to prepare for the largest-ever security operation for approximately 88 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games.
