As Israel escalates its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and its violent military occupation of the West Bank, international sporting bodies have a moral obligation to take all measures to prevent genocide, or risk being held criminally liable.
Yet the world’s top three cycling races continue to allow Israel’s Team Genocide to participate, helping Israel sportswash its grave crimes against Palestinians.
The Giro d’Italia (9 May – 1 June), Tour de France (5 - 27 July) and Vuelta a España (23 August – 14 September) are shamefully allowing Israel Premier Tech, a cycling team representing Israel, to participate. Meanwhile, Israel continues with its genocide in Gaza, killing tens of thousands, using starvation as a weapon of war, and committing sporticide (killing more than 700 Palestinian athletes and destroying Palestinian sports facilities in Gaza).
Israel Premier Tech was created by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams with the stated goal of sportswashing Israel’s 77-year-long regime of military occupation and apartheid, and now its genocide. Adams has described Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in shamefully racist terms of “good vs. evil and civilization against barbarism.” He has called world leaders who have called for Israel to stop “this killing of women, of children, of babies” as “useful idiots.” Adams has also described the unhinged racist Trump administration as “the most positive in history, the strongest on Israel that we have ever seen.”
UCI, the international body governing cycling, claims to be a “politically neutral organization.” UCI immediately sanctioned Russia just days into its illegal invasion of Ukraine, suspending all Russian and Belarussian teams and banning all UCI events in Russia and Belarus. Yet in a show of typical Western hypocrisy, UCI has not only closed an eye to Israel’s decades-long record of grave crimes against Palestinians, but is now helping to sportswash Israel’s Gaza genocide by allowing Israel Premier Tech to participate.
This is not the first time UCI and its top races have rendered themselves complicit in Israel’s sportswashing of its grave crimes against Palestinians. We salute the many groups and cycling fans in Italy, France and Spain that have organized protests over the participation of Team Apartheid Israel along the routes of the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España.
Israel is able to commit this livestreamed genocide and continue what Amnesty International has determined to be a 77-year apartheid regime with complete impunity because of the failure of international bodies, including those governing sports, to uphold international law by sanctioning Israel.
Hypocritical international sporting bodies will only meet their obligation to ban genocidal Israel from sports if, as sports journalist Dave Zirin has said, we make them. Let’s do that.
We call for more peaceful protests than ever along the routes of cycling races where Team Genocide is participating, including the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España. Let’s make sure the road is closed to genocide perpetrators.
Join us and help ensure that UCI and its races get the message: there is no place for genocide in cycling.
For more information on Giro d’Italia, Tour de France mobilizations and Vuelta a España, contact us at: [email protected]