The UAE denied an Israeli tennis competitor, Shahar Peer, access to their country to play in Sony Ericsson World Tennis Association Tour. This is contrary to WTA rules, and a quick inspection of the WTA site reveals no mention of poor Shahar (other than her player page — she seems pretty damned good!). See CNN for more details. This is the same Israeli who competed in Qatar in 2008.

Muffti finds tennis SUPER boring, but he feels pretty bad for Shahar. So do a good number of current and former tennis pros from France, Russia and elsewhere. If you want to contact the WTA and tell them how you feel, their contact page is here. Tell them the Muffti sent ya.

grandmuffti
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grandmuffti

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  • Why do you allow that idiot to hijack every other thread? The comments section is no fun anymore 🙁

  • first, about the recent incident: i heard that the international tennis channel refuses to broadcast all games from that tournament, effectively boycotting it.
    secondly, about the gazan football team not being allowed to exit gaza – not true. they were not allowed to ENTER ISRAEL, even if to pass to the west bank. if they wanted they could have gone through the border with egypt. oh, yeah, did you all suddenly forget gaza has a border with egypt aswell?

  • I wasn’t aware there was an updated edition of the “Protocols” out… It shows that uneducated fools can easily be tricked into believing anything.

  • CTC, fact is you’re a bad Muslim and as little caring for your fellow believers or humanity in general as I’m for Mao’s belly button.

    Find yourself a different playground if the swings here are too high for you.

  • Actually Mufti, it’s not the same at all and it’s not a matter of two wrongs. Dubai has no security concerns and this move is purely political. The Israeli moves were triggered by security concerns as you can see by the fact that the Palestinian players do go to international tournaments regularly. It’s not that they disallow Gazan players from playing. The opposite seems to be true with the exception happening during particular security situations.

  • We’re not special, OCO, it’s just a simple regular matter of two wrongs not making a right — Dubai can deny entry to anyone they want and Israel can deny visas as they see fit – but it it’s a shame to not let Gazan soccer players not play Muffti doesn’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to Israeli players.

    Just as Muffti think it would be a shame if Israel put future bans on Palestinians from competing in response to Dubai not letting in an Israeli player for political reasons, even if by your tit-for-tat reasoning it would be justified.

  • Muffti, here is the Ha’aretz article, reported by Reuters, about the incident you’re describing:

    Soccer / Palestinian soccer team laments Gaza travel ban

    By Reuters

    The head of the Palestinian Football Association said his national team’s no-show at an Asian Cup qualifier against hosts Singapore yesterday was due to Israel’s refusal to allow players to travel from Gaza.

    Ahmed al-Afifi said the fixture had to be canceled because players making up most of the team could not travel through the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt. Another three players, Palestinian expatriates, were to have traveled separately.

    He said Israel had also refused to allow team members to take an alternative route via Israel and the West Bank to Jordan for their onward journey to Singapore. They had planned to travel to Singapore on November 12.

    The Israel Defense Forces denied the allegation, saying Rafah was open to the team at the time of their request to travel abroad. But a military spokesman confirmed that Erez, a Gaza border crossing used by Palestinians to enter Israel, had been closed due to security concerns.

    Afifi said the Palestinian FA had appealed to world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, which he had urged to reschedule the match.

    “Israel has refused to allow the team to pass through the Erez crossing to travel to Jordan and from there to Singapore but FIFA insisted that the game must be held on time,” Afifi told reporters in Gaza.

    The Rafah crossing with Egypt has been closed intermittently since June 25, when Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and abducted another in a cross-border attack from Gaza.

    Palestinian national team captain Saeb Jundeya said he was disappointed. “I had assured all my neighbors and people who asked me whether the game would be held on time that we would travel, but today I have to tell them that we were unable to make it because the occupation (Israel) did not allow it,” he said.

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/788595.html

  • Actually, it took 5 minutes to understand what happened with your Palestinian soccer player, Ziad Al Kourd. As the Guardian, a newspaper whose criticism of Israel goes far and wide, tells us in this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2004/sep/08/newsstory.sport9 “After last month’s suicide bombings in the Israeli town of Beersheba the prospect of the absent Gaza five joining the squad all but evaporated.” It appears we’re talking about 2004 in the pre-rocket era when the Palestinians were still very busy trying to blow up Israeli civilians and Israel was fighting to stop them. They closed borders and crossings and in fact, they also destroyed houses that were near the tunnel smuggling routes, as was Al Kourd’s.

    This had nothing to do with sports.

    You can dispute whether Al Kourd was fairly stopped or whether his home was fairly targeted, but you can’t say that this had anything to do with trying to stop sports or boycott sports. In fact, Al Kourd had just returned from playing abroad.

    You were given an inch, took a foot, and got it wrong.

  • atually it does muffti, if israel can prevent palestinians from playing, why the fuck cant dubai prevent an israeli from ENTERING dubai?

    oh right, you are special blah blah blah

  • OCO does have one thing right (according to wikipedia at least!):

    Recently, Israel’s refusal to issue exit visas has resulted in players or in some case the entire team being unable to represent their country. In November 2006, all players based inside Palestine were denied exit visas. The AFC, Asia’s governing football body decided to cancel the match since both teams had been eliminated from the competition by virtue of their previous results against China and Iraq. In October 2007, the second leg of a crucial World Cup qualifier between Palestine and Singapore was not played due to Palestine’s inability to obtain an exit visa.

    That doesn’t justify banning Israeli players, Muffti doesn’t think, but it’s not cool.

  • tearing my other assertions?

    even your idf couldnt explain, what can you explain?

  • what about the palestinian athletes?

    and why the hell would i be worried if you came to bangladesh?

  • The Palestinian Fulbright Scholars who weren’t able to leave Gaza were victimized more by the tension between The US Embassy in Tel Aviv and the US Consulate in East Jerusalem. The two entities are at loggerheads with each other and rather than have their Embassy advocate on behalf of the Palestinian Fulbright scholars, the US Consulate simply let the matter go the way it did. Israeli authorities would reportedly have been sympathetic to the Scholars and weren’t even aware of the problem when the Consulate jumped the gun and and canceled the scholarships. Those scholarships were later reinstated when proper procedure was followed although the US revoked 4 of the students’ visas presumably for security reasons.

    OCO, as usual your information is pure shit. You can’t even be bothered to Google the veracity of your assertions. This took me 5 minutes to find out from the NYT. Please stop citing whatever bullshit incomplete and biased source you’ve been gleaning your crap from. This was too easy. I’d tear the rest of your crap apart but I have a flight to catch. Don’t worry. It’s not to Bangladesh.

    You can’t even spell “Fulbright” properly. Hint: It’s only got one L. Another hint: Don’t bother applying genius.

    🙂

  • hahaha, so your response to my evidence is finding facts about the country i live in???

    and ck scolds me for straying of topic??

    wasnt the topic about athletes and their banning from events?

    face the facts froylein israel gets away with a lot of stuff, all israeli athletes should be treated the same way palestinian athletes are treated

    i bet many israeli athletes served in the idf and have beaten up palestinians at checkpoints

    you guys as i have said are all right wingers, even your left compared to the left in other countries are right wing

    why do you wanna play in arab countries anyway, doesnt your torah say you shouldnt interact with “ishmael”?

  • actually forylein none of those athletes i mentioned were terrrorists, if they were, israel would have arrested them

    if they were terrorists, i wouldnt have mentioned them

    and froylein the israeli athlete does support stealing land, torture, and using white phosphorus on civilians, so now you know why she was not allowed to play

    as for bangladesh???…….so?

    werent the greeks and romans who devastated the jews more advanced than the jews?

    werent the ancient egyptians more advanced than the jews?

    as for bangladesh, the people are tough here, they survived everything they have faced, they are going to survive the future

    and there are lots of charities and NGO’s here, like the famous grameen bank, whose founder won a nobel prize

    did the palestinian with downs syndrome a terrorist supporter?…….if the israelis think so, then you guys are fucking retarded, thats for sure

    and one more thing, after the madoff scandal, you guys are talking about charity????

  • Och, CTC, show me a list of Israelis that have blown themselves up in Dubai mayhaps? Or Israelis that ideologically and / or logistically support the idea of another Israeli blowing himself up in Dubai? Don’t you think your understanding of democracy is tainted by watching too many mafia films?

    BTW, don’t you have more pressing problems in Bangladesh to concern yourself with? Why doesn’t your concept of a Muslilm brotherhood make you spend your time fighting poverty, low ife expectancy and high illiteracy rate in the country you live in? http://hdrstats.undp.org/2008/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_BGD.html

    Or does compassion only leave a good taste in your mouth if you can claim it from others? One thing for sure, this blatantly contradicts Muslim ideals.

  • more proof

    A 21-year-old Down Syndrome athlete from Palestine is forced to stay at home after being refused permission by Israeli authorities to leave for the Special Olympics.

    Report on Special Olympics, Ireland 2003 (Irish Times 18 June 2003

    i have provided the the date and the time of the newpaper report

    you guys really are special, preventing a mentally disabled palestinian from being involved in the special olympics

  • the middle i provided the names of the arab players along with the FIFA warning citation

    so themiddle tell me, what does that make you guys?

    who is the liar now

  • scroll down to the bottom of the webpage, there you will find the story with pictures

  • i guess you are gonna tell me those palestinian footballers didnt deserve to go abroad,lol

    if the football match happened in israel, israel had a right to prevent them, but it was supposed to take place in uzbekistan, so you have no excuse, and the idf didnt and fifa sent a warning to israel

  • actually i have lots of evidence

    http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.php

    scroll down to the “sports boycott of israel”

    World soccer’s governing body (FIFA) said it was considering action [against Israel] over the air strike.. which left a large crater in the centre of the main football stadium in Gaza. The IDF has acknowledged that the stadium was specifically targeted to “send a strong message to the Palestinian people..”

    Jerusalem Post, 7 April 2006

    i have also provided a report with a jewish newspaper citation above, the jerusalem post

    if the idf can hamper palestinian athletes and make craters on palestinian football fields

    then dubai can ban israeli athletes

    you guys really have short memories dont you

    do you need more proof?

    the website also has a picture with the crater

    Israel routinely prevent Palestinian sportsmen from attending international sports competitions. In 2004 five players were prevented from travelling to the World Cup qualifier game against Uzbekistan – as a result Palestine failed to qualify.

    Those players who had managed to attend the Uzbekistan match were punished on their return – after crossing from the Egyptian border to return to Rafah – a distance of just 100 metres took them 40 hours due to israeli checkpoints! Then upon reaching his home, Ziad Al Kourd discovered his house in the Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah had been demolished by the Israeli army! Earlier the israelis had killed Palestine’s talented midfielder Tarek al-Quto in the West Bank

    there, i have provided more detailed info

    if you still dont believe me, you can easily find the articles on other websites

    now we know who the jerks are, eh

  • Do you have links, CTC? Can you prove the assertions you make? For example, which Arabs from “Palestine” did Israel ban from participating in which events and under what circumstances?

    If you don’t, the above gets erased.

  • actually israel banned arabs from palestine from participating in many events, it was a very common practice

    israel also prevented palestinian fullbright scholars from leaving gaza, which even pissed of the normally pro israel US

    yeah ephraim, i am sure all the major sponsors like fox news,american banks, european companies which fund the events are all anti semites, oh wait………..

    it seems israel can dish it out but cant take it

    do i need to mention the fact that israel also banned anti cancer medicine from entering gaza

    you people are the worst hypocrites in this modern age, crying anti semitism when it suits your needs but ignoring your own crimes

    dubai doesnt have diplomatic relations with israel, why should dubai allow her in???

    didnt america put sanctions on iraqi sports teams from 91 to 2003???

    what a bunch of hypocrites you are

    i am guessing ck is gonna delete this post but i dont care anymore

    you are all selectively blind

  • I agree… where is the global media when Jews are being mistreated? If Israel barred an Arab under the same circumstances, there would be riots in Paris, and condemnation from world leaders.

    The hypocrisy is deafening. They say that history repeats itself… I can only hope that they’re wrong.

  • All of the international sports organizations are run by anti-Semitic whores addicted to Arab money. They blatantly violate their own rules all the time. If they didn’t kowtow to the Arabs they’d all go broke. So if the Arabs tell them no Jews allowed, they do as they’re told and make up some lie about how their rules weren’t actually violated.

    You know, like the French who say that Arabs beating up Jews on the streets of Paris isn’t anti-Semitism.