Israel’s Olympic team said some athletes have received threats as they compete in Paris amid larger tensions over Palestinian deaths during the war in Gaza and the threat of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East.
Yael Arad, president of the Israeli National Olympic Committee, said the team members had received “centralised” threats meant to generate “psychological terror” in athletes, without giving further details.
Last week, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into emailed death threats to Israeli athletes, and the national cybercrime agency is looking into the leak of some Israeli athletes’ personal data online, which has since been taken down.
Prosecutors also launched an inquiry into inciting racial hated after Israeli athletes received ‘discriminatory gestures” during an Israel-Paraguay match.