Although she doesn’t seek it out, Israel’s Shahar Peer seems to attract unwanted controversy wherever she goes. This time it’s her current appearance at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand where members of a protest group called Global Peace and Justice protested Peer outside the event’s stadium.
The group, which calls for the withdrawal of Israel from Palestine, also wrote Peer a letter asking her to not play at the event saying that doing so would be a “significant sacrifice” and if she did not, then her “silence” would indicate her sympathy with the Israeli government.
Peer, who endured similar protests by the same group last year, rejected their request and said to the press “I don’t really have a reaction. Everyone can do whatever they want.” Peer added, “It’s a shame that somebody thinks it’s my fault that there are problems in the world.”
Read more about the story here.
Why this group thinks that focusing on Peer, at one small tennis event, will change Middle East politics is not even worth analyzing. Though this has shades of last year’s debacle when fans were locked out of the Davis Cup tie between Sweden and Israel due to security concerns, one hopes that 2010 will not see further pointless attempts at mixing sports and politics just for the sake of media coverage.
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