A group of over 200 surfers and 24 organisations have signed off on a letter to the president of the ISA asking that Israeli surfers be banned from competing in any form of events in which the governing body has jurisdiction due to the country’s ongoing conflict with Gaza.
The letter, which has been spearheaded by surfing activist Lucy Small, asks Fernando Aguerre and the ISA to apply the same standard to Israel, as they did with Russia when they banned any Russian surfers from competing in their events following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Anat Lelior is currently representing Israel at the women’s surfing event at the Olympics. She’s in round three and is due to face two time world champion Tyler Wright when competition resumes. Anat, who was born in Tel Aviv and served in the Israeli defence forces for two years when she was 18, also competed at the 2020 Olympics where she finished seventeenth. In order to qualify for the Olympics, Anat competed in the ISA World Surfing Games.
In the letter Lucy wrote, she said the call for the ban relates to ‘events in Gaza, in which Israel has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians and caused thousands more to become injured and missing.’
“We ask that this same standard be applied to Israel given that the civilian deaths in Gaza caused by Israel in ten months are more than three times those caused by Russia in Ukraine in more than two years. The number of Palestinian children killed by Israel is already almost ten times that of Ukraine. A ban on Israeli surfers from competition would be an important response by the ISA to support the upholding of international law. Upholding international law is not taking a partisan approach, rather it is the only objective action at our disposal that ensures the protection of all members of the surfing community around the world.”
The letter states that this presents an ‘opportunity’ to the surf community to learn from past failures and ban Israel from competing until a ‘just peace is established in Israel and Palestine.’
“FIFA, the international governing body of football has announced it will commence its own investigation into banning the Israeli Football Association following requests from its member bodies. An ISA decision to ban Israel would be in line with the global community expectations and a strong move of leadership to uphold international law. For thirty years South Africa was banned from major sporting events including the Olympics for the crime against humanity of apartheid. In the 1980s, when the calls for a global sporting boycott of South Africa were at their strongest, professional surfing ignored these calls and continued to hold events in South Africa. It was not until a group of the world’s best surfers – Tom Carroll, Tom Curren, Martin Potter and Cheyne Horan launched their own boycott that surfing took notice. Eight years after this boycott, the apartheid was officially dismantled.”
You can read the letter in full below.
