PA official livid: The IOC has double standards

The head of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Olympic Committee, Jibril Rajoub, on Thursday criticized what he described as "double standards" from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), after it refused the PA’s request to bar Israel from taking part at the Paris Games, AFP reported.

Rajoub had demanded a boycott of Israel in a letter to the IOC earlier this week which was rejected by the head of the international Olympics body, Thomas Bach.

"This confirms that there are international institutions that insist on applying double standards and not adhering to the Olympic Charter, laws and regulations, or morals," Rajoub said on Thursday as he arrived at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport with the PA sporting delegation.

"The Israelis or the Israeli Olympic Committee have lost the moral, sports, humanitarian and legal right to participate," Rajoub charged, saying Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amounted to "crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing".

Bach, in rejecting Rajoub’s request to ban Israel, said he would not get into politics.

The attempt to bar Israel from the Olympics is the latest effort by the Palestinian Authority to have Israel banned from sporting events.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) soccer association announced in April that it would call for action against Israel at the annual FIFA congress.

However, FIFA last week postponed the decision on the PA request to suspend Israel from international soccer, clearing the way for the Israeli men’s national team to play at the Paris Olympics.

Rajoub has in the past said that Jews deserved the genocide inflicted on them by the Nazis. Prior to that he declared that if the PA had a nuclear bomb, it would use it against Israel.

In one incident, Rajoub was filmed as he verbally confronted Border Police officers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, telling one of them to "shut up, go to hell."