Following several calls to withdraw from the Tour of Spain due to the safety risks associated with pro-Palestinian protests during the race, the Israel Premier Tech cycling team, led by Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, decided last week-end, before the start, to change its jersey, removing all mention of the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last week the technical director of the Tour of Spain, Kiko Garcia, stated that there was a real risk that protests could disrupt the competition and endanger the peloton if the Israel Premier Tech (IPT) team continued the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yesterday, the sixteenth race stage had to be cut short due to protests. It seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult to schedule cycling competitions in which teams have ties with Israel.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile a letter sent by the Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU) lawyers demanding that the Israel Premier Tech cycling team not be allowed to participate in the Grand Prix de Montr\u00e9al race to be held on September 14, 2025 was delivered by bailiff to the office of Mayor Valerie Plante on Friday, September 5.<\/p>\n
Sylvan Adams \u2013 (a close friend of the criminal Benjamin Netanyahu) \u2013 the owner of the Israel Premier Tech racing team (formerly known as Israel Start-Up Nation)\u00a0 has referred to himself as a \u201cself-appointed ambassador at large for the State of Israel\u201d and has indicated that Israel\u2013Premier Tech cyclists are also seen as ambassadors for the country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It should be noted that multiple Israeli human rights organizations, including B\u2019Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and the world\u2019s largest association of genocide scholars, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have publicly described Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza as genocide, a crime against humanity, and a war crime.<\/p>\n
By allowing a team acting as a promotional agent for a state accused of human rights violations at an event it sponsors, the City of Montreal exposes itself to a real risk of complicity and whitewashing of these crimes through sport, commonly known as sportswashing.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU) believes this constitutes further grounds for excluding Israel-Premier Tech from the Grand Prix Cyclistes de Montr\u00e9al. Consequently, PAJU formally requests the City of Montreal, and particularly Mayor Val\u00e9rie Plante, to use their authority to demand the immediate exclusion of the Israel-Premier Tech team from the list of participants in the 2025 Grand Prix Cyclistes de Montr\u00e9al.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The PAJU is a human rights organization that explicitly recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to national existence and to live in security. We condemn all violations of human rights. PAJU was co-founded in Montreal by Bruce Katz, a Jewish Canadian and Rezeq Faraj, a Palestinian. Who have been friends for more than 25 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following several calls to withdraw from the Tour of Spain due to the safety risks associated with pro-Palestinian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-132479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}