Sports protests have less impact

John Minto and his mates might be on a bit of a loser when it comes to protests like that against Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer.

South Africa and apartheid is one thing but the Israel-Palestine question? The modern chapter of this dire saga of political-religious confrontation started in 1948 and more than 60 years of the best human endeavours have achieved ... nothing.

So banging a drum and hooting megaphone slogans at 22-year-old Peer, like the one that says she has blood on her hands, is sure to force Israel into submission.

The whole Palestinian question may just be insoluble - two peoples, both of whom believe the land is theirs; both spurred on by religious and political views and extremists. No matter who prevails, the other will always claim what they believe is theirs.

Those of us who think that the matter will move forward only when Israel grants Palestine lands and self-determination also know, deep down, that will not be the end of the matter.

The Palestinians will set up home and then movements like Hamas will gear up and Israel's right to exist - as much an issue now as ever - will be under attack again. They'll strike back and/or invade ... and so it goes; on it goes.

None of which is to suggest that the merry band - Minto And The Megaphones - should not be exercising their right of free speech to protest against Peer and Israel. They have a perfect right to do so.

It's just that Minto said last week that sports boycotts were an effective method of change.

Are they?

There's no denying the effectiveness of the movement back in 1981 and its impact on the evil of apartheid. But South Africa was an isolated sore; alone in the world as a state run purely on racial lines. Israel is a state founded on the twin forges of persecution and Hitler's mass murder of six million.

Israel and the Palestinians have diaspora and networks which stretch across the globe; it is a religious, political, geographical, historical and military struggle.

It has international ramifications that affect the West, if not the rest of the world, and still has the touch-paper tendency which could set off the next great conflict, nuclear or otherwise.

South Africa also involved the great god Rugby, a towering influence in the New Zealand and South Africa of 1981 but much less so today. If you influenced rugby in 1981, you were influencing society.

The anti-apartheid cause did make a difference but did it solve everything? Regrettably, no, in real terms. Yet in 2006, the 25th anniversary of the divisive 1981 Springbok tour of this country, there was some bilious back-slapping and self-congratulations here about the role played in the "liberating" of South Africa.

In a column then, I wrote that race was still an issue in selection of the Springboks - although this time it was regarding "transformation" players (black or coloured players selected for political reasons instead of whites; an uncomfortable reversal of roles yet I can recall no protests here regarding same...). In 2003, a Springbok lock refused to share a room with a coloured player.

That column also said: "Inequality also lives on economically, 12 years after apartheid ended in 1994. About 60 per cent of the 46 million population earns less than US$7000 a year, with blacks still making up about 90 per cent of the country's poor. About 50 per cent live below the poverty line.

Unemployment is officially 26 per cent, other estimates put it at 40 per cent. The average black household has become 15 per cent poorer in the past 12 years. The issues are still there, just wearing different clothes."

Political activism is one thing; cold, hard reality another.

That's what's wrong with the Minto And The Megaphones approach. Sports fans are much more politically aware.

Back in 1981, rugby fans reacted with outrage to the protest movement's attack on their way of life; the protesters with vehemence to what they saw as a selfish, unthinking conservatism. Nowadays, however, the injustices of an ugly world - and there are many - are routine visitors.

I do not remember any protests here when Serbian athletes came here during the horrors with Bosnia and Croatia.

I remember no protests by Minto, or anyone, regarding what Robert Mugabe and his evil regime have done to white families (and others) in Zimbabwe; nor at Australian sportspeople because of the continuing plight of the Aborigines. People are aware of such selective justice now.

Now such protests seem like political cant or propaganda - from all sides. The protesters say Israel has committed crimes against the Palestinians but make no attempt at balance or reference to Israel's plight as a country surrounded by those who wish it extinct.

Read extremists from the other side - theirs is a polemic about an evil world and an evil media ganging up on Israel and the Jews.

In an insoluble argument, he who shouts loudest can curry more favour. Israel has aided this by abrogating the PR war - leaving the Palestinian cause free to cast itself as the victim.

Noam Chomsky, the Jewish author, intellectual and "libertarian socialist" (and arch critic of Israel) said last year: "Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long."

So no one-eyed Jewish perspective there, then.

The protests have been successful in the eyes of the protesters because news agencies have reported them and stories have been carried in the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald - both cities with large Jewish and Muslim populations.

But real change isn't about making a one-sided noise, no matter how well-intentioned.

The Israel-Palestine question will not be settled by megaphone. Real change can occur only if both Israel and the Palestinians want it.

That's why sports protests like this one seem to have done their dash unless perhaps it is on something like an Olympic stage; with a clear case against injustice. Black and white, you might say.

It's why Minto and co are on a loser. Their only answer to the complex Israel-Palestine question is that Israel is in the wrong.

People are aware the protesters are bringing only prejudices to the megaphone, not solutions. They'd rather watch the tennis. Paul Lewis is Jewish.