Paris, July 23 (RHC)-- France's police force has been ordered to provide 24-hour protection for the Israeli Olympics delegation amid calls for pro-Palestinian protests during the Games against the Zionist regime's ongoing genocide of Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a TV interview on Sunday evening that Israeli athletes will receive 24-hour protection during the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
The Israeli regime has gained international notoriety as a ruthless, law-breaking, child-killing entity with no regard for human lives.
Over the weekend, at a pro-Palestinian rally -- where protesters were demonstrating against the Israeli regime forces month-long genocidal war on the defenseless people, mostly innocent children and helpless women, trapped in the besieged Gaza strip -- a far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party lawmaker, Thomas Portes, said the Israeli Olympics team was not welcome in France.
Portes emphasized that during the popular competition mass protests would be staged against the Israeli regime’s decades-long atrocities to show the international community’s solidarity with the righteous Palestinian people who were run out of their homes and deprived of their inalienable rights and their right to life as any human being on Earth.
“We are a few days away from an international event which will be held in Paris, which is the Olympic Games. And I am here to say that no, the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Olympic Games in Paris,” Portes asserted to applause as seen on a video posted on social media.
"We have to use this deadline and all the levers we have to mobilize,” Portes added. He later told Le Parisien newspaper that the French diplomats should ask the International Olympic Committee to ban the Israeli regime’s flag and anthem at the Games.
Meanwhile, some LFI lawmakers also showed support, defending Portes’ comments despite widespread attacks by the Zionist forces. Manuel Bompard, a senior party official and lawmaker, wrote on X that he supported Portes “in the face of the wave of hatred he is experiencing.”
“Faced with repeated violations of international law by the Israeli government, it is legitimate to ask that its athletes compete under a neutral banner in the Olympic Games,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, in a sign of high-sensitive security measures for the Israeli delegation, a memorial ceremony for some Israeli athletes who died in the 1972 Munich attack has been moved from outside Paris’ City Hall to the Israeli embassy.
“The request from the French authorities to move the ceremony to the embassy from City Hall was received due to the fact that it was destined to be held in the restricted security area (‘grey area’) prior to the Olympic Games,” the embassy said in a statement.
The Olympic Games Paris 2024, which is scheduled to be held in France from July 26 to August 11, kicks off with an opening ceremony along the Seine river in Paris with athletes paraded in barges sailing down the stream.
It is unclear whether the Israeli team will take part in this event. However, the Israeli regime’s football team is slated for a match against the Malians in Paris’s Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday, two days before the Friday opening parade.
