Jewish Group Urges Germany To Stop Funding Palestinian Sports Events That Glorify Terror
TEL AVIV – A U.S.-based anti-Semitism watchdog is calling on the German government to suspend a new deal that funds Palestinian Authority sports agencies until the agencies stop their “blatant sanctification of Jew-killers” by naming tournaments after terrorists.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to “suspend this unthinkable agreement until the Palestinian Authority removes all names of terrorists from all sectors of Palestinian sport and their acts of terror be publicly condemned by Ramallah.”
Among other benefits, the agreement would see Germany pay “all expenses and fees” for training the Palestinian Football Association. The deal was signed last week by Germany’s Ramallah envoy Peter Beerwerth and PFA’s director, Jibril Rajoub. Rajoub has expressly prohibited joint sporting events between Palestinians and Israelis, calling such cooperation “a crime against humanity,” monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch said. Rajoub, who in 2013 threatened to nuke Israel, also urged global soccer association FIFA to suspend Israel’s membership, saying the country is a “state of bullies.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed “revulsion” that “today’s Germany could be associated through sport with the blatant sanctification of Jew-killers, thereby evoking the shadows of the 1936 Nazi Olympics and the 1972 Munich Olympics atrocity.”
Samuels added that “if Berlin wishes to reignite the spirit of peace, it should perhaps invite Israeli and Palestinian football teams for a ‘friendly’ match, despite Sports Minister Rajoub’s definition of sports encounters of young Palestinians with their Israeli peers as a ‘crime against humanity.’”
SWC publicized a list of 21 Palestinian sports teams, tournaments and stadiums named after terrorists responsible for the murder of Israelis.
Rajoub himself has a history of terrorism, as Breitbart Jerusalem’s Aaron Klein reported:
In 1970, Rajoub was sentenced by Israel to life in prison after he was arrested and convicted of throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus near Hebron. Part of his conviction was because of his membership in a Fatah-associated terrorist organization.
He was released from incarceration in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which had kidnapped three Israelis.
Less than two years after his release, Rajoub was arrested and convicted two more times on terrorism-related charges, including membership in Fatah terrorist cells and planning attacks.
He was deported to Lebanon in 1998, where he quickly became a top adviser to Fatah deputy leader Khalil al-Wazir, who at the time was coordinating an anti-Israel intifada.
After Wazir’s death, Rajoub went on to closely associate himself with PLO Leader Yasser Arafat.
Klein continued:
Rajoub returned with Arafat to the West Bank after the signing of the 1994 Oslo Accords, which established cantons of territory to be governed by Arafat’s PLO.
…Rajoub became head of Arafat’s Preventive Security Force, which was repeatedly implicated in attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. Many members of the Preventive group doubled as members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s so-called military wing. The brigade is a terrorist organization responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings and other deadly attacks on Jews.