Tennis and Bigotry in the UAE
What Have I Got to Do With It? Reasonable question: Israel's Shahar Peer, ranked 48 in the world, can't participate in the Dubai Tennis Championships because she was denied an entry visa by the United Arab Emirates for one reason alone: She's Israeli. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
The United Arab Emirates can be full of itself.
With one side of its mouth the UAE boasts about its sophisticated modernization, its pretty festivals, its colossal buildings, its millionaires, even, supposedly, its tolerance.
What mumbles out of the other side of the UAE's mouth is rank bigotry.
One of the players who'd qualified for the women's draw is Shahar Peer, who's ranked 48th. Just last week she made it to the semi-final of Thaliand's Pattaya Open. In 2007, when she was ranked 17th, she made it to the quarterfinals of the US Open and the Australian Open, where she almost upset Serena Williams (Peer lost in the third set, 8-6). But as far as the UAE is concerned, there's one problem with Peer: She's Israeli. She was denied a visa. She can't participate in the Dubai Open.
The United Arab Emirates, like all Arab countries but Qatar and Egypt, has no diplomatic relations with Israel. (Qatar just severed what low-level trade relations it had with Israel in protest over the Gaza war.) Not that it should matter. Lack of diplomatic relations isn't even the reason tournament organizers offered up for the visa denial. A statement from the government-run Dubai Tennis Championships attributed the denial to the organizers' fear that Peer's presence would provoke protests and security threats.
So what if it did? If Peer is willing to play, knowing that she is an unwitting lightning rod for minor anti-Israeli protest (over Gaza), as she was in New Zealand while playing in a tournament there (if you can call 20 people holding up signs a protest), then why not let her play? If the UAE is worried about security, why not beef up security measures? And since when is a country that specializes in suppressing protest, among other things it suppresses, suddenly worrying about protesters?
Of course, it's not about security. It's not about a fear of protest. It's the same old banal bigotry that's kept Arab countries' intestines knotted up in nooses over Israel for years. The American Tennis Channel was right to refuse to televise the tournament. And the WTA, organizer of the women's tour, promises to rethink its relationship with Dubai. But it's an empty promise. The WTA shouldn't rethink the future. It should act immediately. It should have made it clear to Dubai: No Peer, no tournament. But money speaks louder than principles, especially when lip-service is so cheap.
Then you have actual players who, like Venus Williams, claim that "All the players support Shahar." Really? In that case, why did Williams not withdraw in support? Why didn't a single player not withdraw? Because sports and principles are about as estranged these days as Muhammad Ali was from the country he didn't want to serve as a soldier in Vietnam in 1967. Remember Ali? One of the last truly principled athletes who willingly gave up all he had earned -- boxing titles, career, adulation, money, four years of boxing in his prime -- to stand by his conviction that as a Muslim he could not fight in the Vietnam War? Chances are today's athletes are so enamored of the shine on their sponsorship logos that they wouldn't know Ali from Muhammad.
Allah knows the UAE certainly doesn't.
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Comments
Man, when the host says you’re not welcome then just leave. Don’t analyze or call names.
Larry, to quote the great John McEnroe, you cannot be serious.
There is nothing wrong in UAEs action. Aparthied South Africa was practically isolated from the sports world for some good reason. Though they had the best cricket team in the world, noone wanted to play against them. Seeing the bigoted actions of Israelis, Arabs have every right to ban them in their soil. The sad thing is that most American are programmed to rally behind your hypocritical comments on middle east including this. But let it be – live like frogs in the well and have fun
While Arabs in pluralistic democratic Israel not only enjoy equal rights but are often favored OVER Jews, especially in Hebron, the most moderate Arabs are still real APARTHEID (no, not as in the anti Israel drama-hype-type, but in the real sense of it) and RACIST, the actual core of the Arabs vs Israel is nothing but Arab racism & Islamic bigotry, see also: http://geocities.com/panarabism, Arabism = Racism!