TOKYO: Lt. Gen. Jibril Rajoub, the President of the Palestine Olympic Committee, has sent an open letter “in the name of Palestine and its athletes” to ask the sporting world and the world at large to help stop the genocide in Gaza.
Rajoub said he was sending his message, which was also sent to Arab News Japan, “from the heart of a wounded Palestine… from amidst the rubble of our stadiums and the wreckage of our hopes” after “718 days of a relentless, merciless war of annihilation.”
“This is a final alarm bell for all of humanity, and that includes our global sports family,” Rajoub wrote, asking for help in stopping “a genocide that is uprooting my people from their land, their history, and their future.”
He reminded his readers that those in the Olympic movement swore to protect, to place sport “at the service of the harmonious development of humanity,” and to promote “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”
Where is that dignity for the Palestinian athlete, he asked, reminding the world that over 1,000 athletes have been killed, while thousands more are wounded, maimed, or disabled. Others, he says are “in the darkness of prisons,” while tens of thousands are displaced.
“Can the Olympic Movement, our movement, stand idly by while the most fundamental human right – the right to life – is violated against its own members? The Israeli sports system has not merely been silent; it has been an active participant. It brazenly integrates settlement clubs – built illegally on my land – into its national leagues, in a flagrant violation of international law and our own Olympic Charter.”
In a final plea, Jibril Rajoub says: “Show the world that our Olympic values are not merely empty words on paper, but a living commitment to our shared humanity. Show them that there is no place for double standards, only for the rule of justice and fairness, without distinction or discrimination.”