‘Arrive in France, we’ll kill you’: Israeli Olympians threatened ahead of Paris games
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Israeli Olympians taking part in Paris 2024 have received death threats, hate messages, and vitriol online over the last few days, Israeli and foreign media reported on Saturday.
Walla reported that, over the weekend, Israeli athletes received online messages written in poor Hebrew. Many also received calls from foreign numbers. On Thursday and Friday, 15 athletes and their teams received identical death threats via email, warning them they would be killed if they arrived in France, Walla reported.
The anonymous email said that the sender intended to harm “any Israeli presence at the Olympics” and said that if any Israeli delegates attended, they would be harmed. The email threatened to repeat the action of Munich 1972 and told the athletes to “Prepare for the intifada!”
During the Munich 1972 Olympics, 11 Israelis were murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. A ceremony, the date and location of which are not yet known, will take place during the Paris Games to commemorate those killed, reported French publication Le Point.
The chairwoman of the Israel Olympic Committee, Yael Arad, said “It was clear to us that such a troll would come. We prepared for it. We instructed the athletes on how to act when it comes and we had many conversations and meetings on the subject,” Walla reported.
The messages and calls have continued over the weekend.
The Israeli Olympic team has landed in Paris and was met with high security presence. The British publication The Telegraph announced in an exclusive on Saturday that Israel would be sending armed Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) agents to Paris to prepare for the largest-ever security operation for Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games.
Security preparations took one year
Israel’s Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar told The Telegraph, “We know there are threats [against the team] but we don’t want to talk about it.” However, he continued by saying that security preparations for the Games had started a year ago and that the team’s security budget had been doubled to compensate for increased threats against Jews and Israelis as a result of the Israel-Hamas war.
Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri told The Telegraph that Israeli officers were most probably already scanning the area in France to determine threats and that the months of planning were “one of the toughest security challenges” Israel’s delegations have had in their history.
Eighty-eight Israeli athletes will be participating in the games. All will receive security details from Shin Bet, as will their staff, Zohar told The Telegraph. Not all would have a bodyguard, he added.
“We try our best to make sure the athletes feel free but also safe and not afraid. We don’t want them to notice the security guards too much,” he said.
A former Shin Bet officer, Lior Akerman, told The Telegraph that Israeli security guards will be “equipped with weapons and technologies” and will be assisted by “local security and police forces.”
France has heightened its security ahead of the Games, locking down parts of the city so that people will require permits to enter, reported the BBC. The opening ceremony of the Olympics will be manned by around 40,000 security personnel, police and gendarmes, in order to protect the 10,500 athletes.
Le Point noted that substantial security service was planned in particular for Israel’s football team’s training sessions taking place on July 21, 23 and 26.
Akerman said that security for the Israeli team will need to stretch from the second of landing in France to the moment of returning home.
“Of course, it is not possible to go into detail about the security methods, but the combination of Israeli experience and knowledge, together with the cooperation with local security forces, provides an excellent and complete answer to the security of the delegation,” Akerman said to The Telegraph.
An unnamed diplomatic official told The Telegraph that the security cooperation between Israel and France ahead of the games is “excellent.”
Former chief Peri added that the threat could arise from anywhere and that danger was inevitable, saying, “It can be Hamas or other terrorists, but Iran is behind almost everything. And France is of particular concern due to the level of antisemitism there.”
French police arrested on Friday a man on terrorism charges who was accused of trying to murder a taxi driver with a knife while expressing support for Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, a source at the terrorism prosecutor’s office said.
In recent months, Israel has foiled many attacks by Iran and other terrorist groups abroad. Israel’s National Security Council published a report in March saying that the risk of terrorism for Israelis abroad was particularly high, with emphasis on the Olympics and Eurovision as being high-risk events.
This increased danger, said Zohar, was not just a threat to Jews and Israelis, but “against everyone. They hate the free world and everyone who believes in democracy. They hate Christians, they hate Jews and anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs.”
The Palestine Olympic Committee (POC) on Friday called for a ban on Israeli athletes from participating in the Paris Olympics, The Telegraph reported, citing the group’s anger regarding Israel’s “human rights violation.”
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