The Israeli youth Ultimate Frisbee teams have been banned from competing in a major championship in Belgium.
“It is heartbreaking,” coach Daniel Ben David told The Daily Signal.
The coach arrived in Belgium on Monday with his teenage players in tow. After playing Ultimate together for three years, the coach of the under 17 open team, meaning men and women can both participate, says his youth players felt confident ahead of the multi-day European Youth Ultimate Championship. But after traveling over 2,700 miles to play in the tournament, his young Israeli team and one other were told they were not allowed to compete or attend the tournament, which is being held Aug. 6-10 in Ghent, about an hour northwest of Brussels.
Due to safety concerns and the violent threats of pro-Palestine demonstrations as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on and tensions grow in the Middle East, Ben David said the European Ultimate Federation, which is hosting the tournament, told the youth teams they were not permitted to compete.
On Tuesday, the European Ultimate Federation and European Flying Disc Federation sent the Israeli teams a notice of “evaluation” announcing that the city of Ghent “Prohibits the participation of the Israeli delegation in the U17 European Championship Frisbee Tournament organized by the European Ultimate Federation.” The “decree” continues, noting that the “presence of the Israeli delegation” is also prohibited at the tournament, and further stating that “local police will oversee compliance.”
The European Ultimate Federation, European Flying Disc Federation, Ghent Mayor Mathias De Clercq, and the Ghent police didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
When initial security concerns were raised before the team arrived in Belgium, a compromise was reached for the Israeli team to compete at a different field that was seen as safer. But on Tuesday morning, Ben David said the team received a message from the organizers of the tournament telling the team “don’t come, your field has been vandalized.”
Vandals splashed red raid and wrote “BOYCOTT ISRAHELL NOW!” on one of the walls of the stadium complex in De Pinte, about 25 minutes south of the fields in Ghent where the other teams are competing.
“Other than that, the field is completely fine, no vandalism,” Ben David said, adding that the personal security the Israeli teams travel with advised that it was safe for the teams to proceed as planned and compete.
The team’s personal security “told us … ‘if we feel something is wrong, even in the middle of a game, we will take you from there and we will not come back,’ and we told that to the organizers and they still didn’t listen,” the coach said.
Ben David and the other coaches gathered their players to tell them “we won’t be competing, unfortunately, because the city and the organizers have prevented us from even entering the city.”
Sharing the news with his players “was one of the hardest moments for me as a coach,” Ben David said. “To see the expressions on the kids’ faces, they were all pretty much crushed, crying … it was really hard because you could just see how all of their happiness [was] draining from their faces.”
Ben David describes his team of 16 players as “a small family.”
“They’re devastated,” Marina Gelfand-Kaplun, one of the player’s mothers who is traveling with the team, told The Daily Signal.
“I never thought that my … kids, too, will have to deal with antisemitism and this horrible situation, I never thought in my life,” Gelfand-Kaplun said. “I thought by the time I’ll have kids, we won’t have this, but apparently we do.”
While the situation is “beyond unfair,” the mother said her son and the other players will “learn from it and rise from it. This is what we always do.”
The Under 17 European Youth Ultimate Championships are held once every two years, Ben David explained, so his players will have all aged out by the time the next under 17 championships are held.
Admitting he might be a bit biased, the coach says his team “would have won this tournament if they would have played because they’re so experienced, they’re so controlled, and they’re so mature.”
Teams from across Europe are competing in the championship, including teams from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. About half the other teams, according to Ben David, have reached out to the Israeli teams and said they believe what is happening is wrong. Israel has been competing in both youth and adult European Ultimate tournaments for over 20 years, the coach said.
“We’re doing everything in our power to make sure this never happens again,” he said, “because if they succeed and don’t get punished for it, then this becomes a regular thing for [Israeli] teams” to be excluded from competitions.
The Israeli team is “working to take legal action” against the city of Ghent, the European Ultimate Federation, and the organizers of the tournament, the coach says.
“This is sports. Let’s keep politics out of it,” Ben David said, “especially when it’s children.”