I don’t usually cover political events as it is my firm belief that sports should be apolitical. However, this particular protest is so intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt that I just have to point out a few things.

Veteran protestor John Minto and a few of his followers protested outside the ASB Tennis Centre in Auckland today, as is their right, and called for Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer to pull out of the tournament.

Minto had already indicated that his group, Global Peace and Justice would do so in this press release and a letter to Peer herself. The reason I find this protest so disgusting, apart from the hate in his press release, is that Peer is just a person going about her normal business. I can understand people protesting the 1981 Springbok Tour, as that team represented South Africa, was chosen along racial lines and gave some legitimacy to the regime, but Peer is a professional tennis player representing herself, she just happens to be Israeli.

On the eve of the tournament last Sunday evening we wrote to Shahar requesting she respect international calls for a comprehensive boycott of Israel and withdraw from the tournament. The letter highlighted the attacks and invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army and the heavy death toll of Palestinians which includes over 100 children.

I’m not sure where these calls for a comprehensive boycott of Israel are coming from, but is he seriously suggesting that she should be unable to earn a living internationally based solely on where she was born?

The sports boycott of Israel is a key part of any boycott campaign because it is much more visible than a trade or investment boycott and can have an important psychological impact. We saw this with the successful sports boycotts against apartheid South Africa which had a big impact in South Africa and around the world.

The difference there is that sports plays a huge role in the South African national psyche, much like it does here, and that particular boycott was mostly applied to national teams, representative of the country, not the case with Miss Peer.

A new website has been launched this week at www.big.org.nz (BIG = Boycott Israeli Goods) which has begun to highlight Israeli goods for sale in New Zealand and calls on shoppers to boycott these products and the stores that continue to stock them.

Did you know Israel is one of the world’s largest manfacturers of pharmaceuticals?

Here’s some excerpts from his letter.

We are writing to request you to withdraw from the ASB Tennis Classic as part of a comprehensive international boycott of Israel.

Again, here’s this comprehensive boycott of Israel we’ve heard so much about…

Israel’s attacks on the Gaza strip are indefensible

And Hamas’s lobbing rockets into Israel from land that was given up in exchange for peace is? There is no right and wrong in this conflict, just degrees of wrongness, but Hamas’s rocket campaign is akin to whacking a big dog repeatedly with a stick and then complaining when the dog turns around and bites you.

Of course, this ignores some of the facts around the latest conflict such as Israel calling neighbours of Hamas buildings and warning them that they are about to be bombed, giving them time to get out, or the fact that Hamas cowards use women and children as human shields, then parade their dead to the media so that Israel is portrayed as the bad guy. Here’s a tactic for you, if you don’t want your women and children killed, stop deliberately putting them in harm’s way!

We realise as a professional tennis player this is a significant sacrifice you are being asked to make.

It’s so easy to be moralistic and tell others what to do when your lively hood doesn’t depend on it.

However it is much less than the sacrifice being made by Palestinian families under siege by Israel.

And this is the crux of it all. Because Israel punished Palastinians solely based on where they were born, in Minto’s eyes, he then thinks it is perfectly acceptable for him to try to do the same thing to someone else. What ever happened to “do unto others”?