Editorial: Request is unreasonable

OPINION: Is the presence of Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer at the ASB Classic in Auckland on a par with the presence of a national rugby squad, representing apartheid-era South Africa, in New Zealand in 1981?

That's a question to which there will probably be a variety of answers, depending on who one asks, but ultimately it's hard to see that it can be honestly answered in the affirmative.

The difference? Well, Shahar Peer is a tennis player who has managed to carve out a successful career on the women's international circuit for herself and it is in that capacity that she is in New Zealand. Tennis is her livelihood and she is justifiably plying her trade, as she does in numerous different countries throughout the year. She is not here as a representative of the state of Israel. That happens to be where she was born, but that's a matter in which she will not have had much choice.

The Springbok squad that came here in 1981 was indisputably representing South Africa, a country that, at the time, was still more than a decade away from emerging from the racist rule of the apartheid era. The members of the team were not in New Zealand pursuing their profession. They were here playing a game – a game that happened to hold some considerable importance to the country's white minority, but a game nevertheless. It was not their livelihood.

And as representatives of a country that had laboured under such a regime for decades, earning international condemnation and sanctions of sporting and other varieties, it was completely justified that so many New Zealanders spoke out so vehemently and demonstrated so passionately against the team's presence here. Those demonstrations may not have stopped the tour, but it was the last time a Springbok team representing apartheid South Africa toured New Zealand.

To get back to Shahar Peer, though. Plainly, things have happened in Israel in recent years that have caused shock across the globe and no right-thinking individual could condone some of the treatment meted out to Palestinians by Israel, though it should be pointed out that opinion on the Middle East situation is probably more divided than it was on South Africa.

But for Global Peace and Justice, the group led by veteran protester John Minto, to ask Miss Peer to withdraw from the ASB Classic "as a demonstration of your commitment to peace" is entirely unreasonable. She is a tennis player on a global circuit who happens to be an Israeli. The logical extension of the request is that she forfeit her career, because if she can't play here, why should she be able to play anywhere else?

But perhaps our feelings on the issue are demonstrated in the fact that Mr Minto was one of nine demonstrators in Auckland yesterday, not one of thousands, as in 1981.

- © Fairfax NZ News