Wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and threat of terrorism, loom over Paris Olympics this summer - The Boston Globe (2024)

The host city elevated its terror threat to maximum two months ago. And the opening ceremony, which will feature more than 10,000 athletes floating in boats along the Seine instead of marching into the Stade de France, will be conducted amid the heaviest security in Games history.

The number of spectators for the event has been reduced from 600,000 to 320,000, and more than 45,000 police will stand guard in the city and its environs.

“From the outset, all plans were built assuming that there would be a terrorist threat,” said Bruno Le Ray, the organizing committee’s head of security.

The IOC has barred Russia and Belarus from the Games for attacking Ukraine. And recently there have been demands from Palestinian supporters to exclude Israel for killing more than 35,000 Gazans in retaliation for the October attack by Hamas terrorists, who killed 1,200 Israeli citizens and took 250 hostages.

Several hundred demonstrators waving Palestinian flags outside the Paris organizing committee headquarters last month called for Israel’s athletes to be subjected to the same restrictions as the Russians and Belarusians.

The difference, as both the IOC and the French government see it, is that Israel did not instigate the war against Hamas.

“We cannot say that Israel is attacking,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “Israel was a victim of a terrorist attack to which it is now responding to in Gaza.”

Israel was the target of the only terrorist assault in Olympic history in 1972 in Munich when Black September, a Palestinian militant group, invaded the residential village and eventually killed 11 athletes and coaches.

With the war in Gaza ongoing, the Israeli Security Agency is worried about the safety of the country’s athletes before and during these Olympics. This month, the wrestlers were kept home from the last-chance qualifying tournament in Istanbul after Turkey suspended trade with Israel.

“I’m disappointed, but I knew that this was going to be the decision,” said Ilana Kratysh, who hoped that she and her teammates would be granted automatic entry to the Olympic field.

Israel is expected to send more than 60 athletes to Paris, and Palestine between six and eight. The IOC, which since 1995 has recognized the Palestinians as a competing entity, is supporting their plan to rebuild damaged sports facilities.

Ukraine announced this week that it will send a team to the Games.

“It is already a victory that we are able to take part under conditions of invasion,” said Vadym Gutzeit, president of the country’s Olympic committee. “The athletes have prepared for the Games under rockets and bombs.”

Bans and boycotts

Banning countries from the Games for instigating wars is nothing new. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire were kept out of the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp following World War I, and Germany also was not invited to Paris in 1924. And the Germans and Japanese were barred from London in 1948 in the wake of World War II.

Politically inspired boycotts later disrupted three consecutive Games. Nearly 30 African nations withdrew from Montreal in 1976 to protest New Zealand’s rugby tour of South Africa, a country that was excluded from the Olympics from 1964 until 1992 for its racist apartheid policy.

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the US led a 66-country boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980. Four years later, the USSR led a counter-boycott of the Los Angeles Games by more than a dozen Eastern European countries.

Since then, the Olympics have had nearly universal participation by the movement’s 206 nations. But Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor two years ago has made it a pariah along with ally Belarus, and both were banned from Paris for violating the Olympic Charter.

The IOC is keeping out any Russian and Belarusian athletes who are connected to the country’s military forces or security agencies or who have actively supported the war.

Russia’s foreign ministry, which accused the IOC of “slipping into racism and neo-Nazism,” has condemned the restrictions as “unscrupulous, illegal, unlawful, and immoral steps.”

A special Olympic eligibility review panel will vet athletes who apply to compete as neutrals. They’ll be forbidden to wear their national colors and will have neither their flag hoisted nor their anthem performed at medal ceremonies.

Russia was sanctioned at the last two Games for its brazen breaking of anti-doping rules. In 2016, more than 100 of its athletes were ruled out of the Rio de Janeiro event.

Three years ago in Tokyo, the Russians were forbidden to use their country’s symbols. But their 335 athletes still were allowed to compete representing their national Olympic committee and won 71 medals, 20 of them gold.

This time, the IOC estimates that only 36-54 individual Russians will qualify for the Games, most of them in judo, wrestling, and tennis. That would be roughly a tenth the number who competed in Tokyo and the smallest Russian delegation since 1912.

The absolute prohibition on Russian teams will reduce significantly the country’s presence in Paris. The Russians last time competed in five team sports, winning medals in men’s and women’s 3x3 basketball, men’s volleyball, and women’s handball.

In individual sports, Russian athletes either have been forbidden to compete by international federations, most notably World Athletics, or have dwindling windows during which to qualify.

Difficult choices to make

Athletes who do decide to compete as neutrals risk being seen as traitors during wartime.

“Choice without choice,” said Evgeniia Chikunova, the breaststroke world record-holder who swam in three events in Tokyo but said that she will not go to Paris. “I think they [IOC] understand that a small number of people will do this.”

One of them is Daniil Medvedev, the former US Open tennis champion who competed in Tokyo and called it “an amazing experience.”

“If I can, I’m going to be there,” he said. “About the neutral flag, I’ll follow the rules.”

While Russia says that its athletes are free to compete at the Games, they will not be supported financially by their government.

“We strongly recommend that you thoroughly understand … the extent and consequences of the personal responsibility assumed,” said ROC president Stanislav Pozdnyakov, who warned athletes not to be “hostages of other people’s interests.”

Belarus, a former Soviet republic that made its first independent appearance in the Summer Olympics in 1996, isn’t discouraging its athletes, expected to number two dozen, from participating as neutrals.

“Of course I would like to have an anthem, a flag, etc.,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said. “But I understand the athletes. This is their life.”

Those who do compete can expect a decidedly chilly reception. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said that the Russians and Belarusians will not be welcome.

And the Ukrainian Olympic committee has told its athletes to “refrain from direct contacts with representatives of the aggressor countries,” including communicating with them on social media.

Lukashenko, whose country has provided Russia with military equipment and staging and training areas on its soil, has urged that its athletes respond defiantly.

“Punch them in the face,” he said. “Show them that you are a real Belarusian.”

Russia already is planning to revive its World Friendship Games, last held in 1984, in mid-September in Moscow and Yekaterinburg. Meanwhile, it has been taking steps to sabotage the Paris Olympics.

The French government claimed that Russia for weeks has been spreading disinformation on social media about the Paris preparations.

“Every day [Russia] is putting out stories saying that we are unable to do this or that,” Macron said.

Paris was this year’s site both by acclamation and default. After the withdrawal of the other five candidates — Boston, Hamburg, Budapest, Rome, and Los Angeles — the IOC decided to award both the 2024 and 2028 editions at the same time in 2017.

“We can’t accept ‘28,” said Tony Estanguet, the Paris bid cochairman. “It’s now or never.”

The City of Light wanted to stage this summer’s Games to mark the 100th anniversary of its hosting in 1924. The world was more peaceful that year, in between world wars, and the Great Depression was five years off.

“We have no doubt whatsoever that it will be plain sailing all the way to the end,” Estanguet said with 100 days to go until the opening ceremony. “And that there will undoubtedly still be new challenges to face.”

John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.