Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.
Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.
On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.
The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.
Didn’t a Ukrainian women get disqualified from Fencing recently for understandably not shaking hands with a Russian opponent? What are the rules, would this bloke have been disqualifed if he hadn’t shook the others hand?
Fencing has a customary handshake.
Fencing is kind of different, as far as I know you shake hands (or tap swords) before fencing to indicate that you aren’t actually going to try and murder each other. Weightlifting isn’t the same in that regard. Though I’m just speculating on the specific rules around this
They are opposed to even the most basic form of civility. Yeah, we already knew that, this just makes it clear to the doubters.
“Unforgivable”. These idiots…
Meanwhile, Iran actually has a seat in parliament that is reserved for a Jewish representative.
That’s Iran-ic
I’ll show myself out
We refuse to normalize Zionist settlers.
