{"id":294318,"date":"2026-02-16T16:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/294318\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T16:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T16:38:09","slug":"lebron-james-faces-backlash-after-pro-israel-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/294318\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James faces backlash after pro-Israel comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers is facing online backlash following comments he made praising Israeli player <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/j-spot\/article-884980\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Deni Avdija<\/a> and saying he heard &#8220;great things&#8221; about Israel.<\/p>\n<p>James&#8217;s comments came on Sunday, prior to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/sports\/article-885340\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA All-Star Game<\/a> in Inglewood, California.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;I said I believe he was an All-Star,\u201d James said of Avdija. &#8220;He\u2019s playing exceptional basketball. So that\u2019s that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">James&#8217; comments then turned to Israel, saying, \u201cIf I have fans over there &#8211; I\u2019ve never been there &#8211; I hope you\u2019ve been following my career. I hope I inspire people over there to not only want to be great at sports but be better in general in life. Hopefully someday I could make it over there. Like I said, I\u2019ve never been over there, but I heard nothing but great things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Online backlash soon followed the remarks.<\/p>\n<p>British-American commentator Mehdi Hasan responded on XTwitter, saying, \u201cWhat a disgrace LeBron is,\u201d in a repost of Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian, who had noted, &#8220;The entire human rights community: Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. LeBron James: &#8216;I\u2019ve heard great things&#8217; about Israel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In an X repost of a video featuring LeBron&#8217;s comments, American influencer Hasan Piker stated, &#8220;he said hope i inspire israel to be great (at killing children) my goat is WASHED.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Others on social media accused James of ignoring Palestinian suffering or suggested that praising Israel in any form was inappropriate amid the ongoing conflict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a dream come true,&#8221; Avdija said before the tournament, holding his Team World uniform with the Israeli flag and his number 8. Avdija scored 5 points in the first game of the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers is facing online backlash following comments he made praising Israeli player&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,16607,4290,69925,85,46,3035,47352,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-294318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-antizionism","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-deni-avdija","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-lebron-james","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}