Eleven days before a youth World Climbing competition was scheduled to begin, Le Camp de base, a Brussels climbing gym, canceled the event over the question of Israel’s participation. This marks the first time a World Climbing event has been called off over the question of Israel, an ethno-supremacist apartheid state currently occupying historic Palestine and facing proceedings before the International Court of Justice regarding its ongoing multi-front genocide of the Palestinian people.

Le Camp de base was set to host the final stage of the World Climbing Europe Youth Series on May 30 and 31. In a public statement released today, the gym’s board of directors said it cannot make its venue, infrastructure, or staff available under the conditions currently proposed.

“We have decided that we cannot make our climbing gym, infrastructure and staff available under the conditions currently proposed, in light of the ongoing ICJ proceedings under the Genocide Convention and the ICJ’s findings of serious violations of international law in its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024.

This is not a decision we take lightly. We know what it means for young athletes, families, coaches, volunteers, federations and everyone who has prepared for this event.

Our decision is not directed at Israeli athletes as individuals nor based on their nationality.

It is not the role of a venue owner to determine athlete eligibility for official competitions. That responsibility lies with the governance bodies of the relevant federations.

However, as a climbing gym, venue owner and employer, it is our responsibility to determine whether an event can be hosted in peaceful, safe and workable conditions.

An official competition is not only a gathering of individuals. It is also a space of representation. Flags, anthems, official uniforms, podium protocols, livestream graphics, rankings, delegations and federations are all part of it.

In that framework, athletes do not only compete as private individuals. They also represent a country, a federation and a state. This is where our disagreement lies.

In the current context in Palestine, while Israel is facing proceedings before the International Court of Justice concerning its obligations under the Genocide Convention, and while the ICJ has also found Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful, we cannot host a competition that normalises Israeli national representation without a clear framework. We cannot pretend that this representation is neutral.

It is not.”

Le Camp de base’s initial ask was for Israeli athletes to compete under neutral status. When World Climbing indicated that implementing full neutral status within the remaining timeframe would be logistically difficult, the gym went further and proposed a compromise on May 18: Israeli athletes could participate, but without any visible national symbols — no flag, no anthem, no national designation in rankings, livestream graphics, or podium protocols. However, the Israeli climbing federation, ILCA, rejected that compromise the following day. It insisted that the event proceed with full Israeli representation.

At that point, Le Camp de base pulled out.

The gym’s statement notes that a significant portion of its staff said they would refuse to work at the event under these conditions, highlighting the important role individuals can play in such situations. Don’t lose the importance of this point: Individuals who know the difference between right and wrong took a stand, publicly, and they made a difference.

Vertige Media reports that Florian Delcoigne, co-founder of Le Camp de base, said, “This is where our responsibility lies: staying rooted in our values.”

As I wrote in my last article, this question was supposed to be addressed at the World Climbing General Assembly this spring. It wasn’t. The in-person General Assembly, originally scheduled in Riyadh, was moved to a virtual format after the Iran-Israel-US war made travel to Saudi Arabia untenable.

The latest rumor I can share is that World Climbing is considering holding a session in July to discuss a motion on Israel’s participation. I haven’t found any more details yet, but I will report when I do.

Why This Matters

To understand what’s actually at stake when a climbing gym in Brussels refuses to hang an Israeli flag, you have to understand how much Israel has invested in the idea that it can’t be seen as a pariah.

Israel’s expansionist colonialist project depends on manufacturing legitimacy faster than it destroys it. The “only democracy in the Middle East” brand coupled with the intentional dehumanization campaigns that prevent people from remembering that Palestinians, like the ones you met in Resistance Climbing, are real people, are the load-bearing fictions that allow Western governments to keep writing checks and looking away.

Israel doesn’t just fight wars with bombs; it fights them with algorithms and song contests. A New York Times investigation published this month found that Israel spent at least $1 million — some of it drawn directly from Netanyahu’s hasbara office, the government’s propaganda arm — to promote its singer in Eurovision and, in the words of the investigation, “burnish the country’s flagging reputation.” (This is the strongest rhetorical repudiation of Israel you’ll ever find in the NYT, which nevertheless ran an editorial about Israel’s systemic rape of Palestinian hostages, including with dogs. Flagging reputation, indeed.)

Consider why a state government is illegally interfering in a pop-music competition in Europe. It’s because it has concluded that this kind of soft-power display matters to its survival. With the Israeli singer coming in second place this week, despite the massive demonstrations of public opposition to Israel’s participation in Eurovision, many are rightly speculating that this whole stupid spectacle was rigged.

And of course, last year, politicians in America joined hands across the aisle to force the sale of TikTok to a consortium of Zionist billionaires, namely Larry Ellison, who has also taken over CNN and CBS News, where he installed Bari Weiss, the mediocrity whose entire career has been built around silencing Palestinian voices and spreading pro-Israel lies. Until this sale, TikTok was the platform that had done more than any other to let young people see what was actually happening in Gaza, as opposed to reports from the mainstream media, which is pathologically averse to ever reporting stories that make Israel “look bad.”

But the unfiltered footage of Israeli depravity on TikTok drastically shifted American opinion in a way that no one could have ever predicted five years ago. Israel panicked. Netanyahu himself described control of social media, particularly TikTok, as the most important weapon today. “You have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield, and one of the most important ones is social media.”

A country that sees a song contest and a video app as existential battlegrounds is a country that understands it cannot win on the merits. Sports bans understand this, too. There is a strong parallel movement happening in football leagues to stop the sports washing of Israel and ban this country from FIFA.

Remember: South Africa didn’t end apartheid because its politicians had a change of heart. Apartheid ended, in part, because South African athletes couldn’t compete anywhere; their teams were unwelcome everywhere, and the isolation became impossible to normalize.

A ban from international climbing would be a small crack in a very large wall. But cracks are how walls come down. Le Camp de base just opened the first one.

Inshallah, let there be more this World Cup season.