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.

  • @some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2071 year ago

    You’ve gotta be pretty insecure to have a complete breakdown over a minor issue. Really makes Irans government appear weak.

        • Cethin
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          81 year ago

          Hold up, assigning traits to a government made up by people (a group of people) is weird, but assigning traits to a different group of people isn’t? I don’t really disagree, but you can’t agree with the comment above you and agree with your comment also.

          • s0ykaf [he/him]
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            71 year ago

            you can’t agree with the comment above you and agree with your comment also.

            of course i can; if i couldn’t, i wouldn’t, but i did it, which is proof that i can do it

            • Cethin
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              41 year ago

              You can’t while being a reasonable, logically consistent person. You can if you argue in bad faith, which I expect but usually people don’t take pride in that.

          • Fushuan [he/him]
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            211 year ago

            Well, yeah it’s obvious, but when people say that X company or country looks weak/happy/pissed, they are refering to the board of directors or congress that are taking the decisions, naming the country instead of the whole sentence is easier.

            You can still find it weird ofc, I was just trying to explain why people do it.

              • h3doublehockeysticks [she/her]
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                131 year ago

                I’m not gonna explain how immediate hostility followed by sarcastic bullshit in response to totally normal behavior is dickish. Just be normal guys.

                • Cethin
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                  1 year ago

                  This is the problem people have with Hexbear specifically. You can almost never have a normal conversation with them. The other day someone (who happened to be from hexbear, but I didn’t realize it at the time of posting) posted an article and said it said something totally different than the actual contents. I pointed out that they were wrong, and they then went through my entire comment history to pick things out and misrepresented them to make themselves feel better I guess. It was weird, but it’s similar to at least half of my interactions with hexbear users.

                  Thank you for calling them out.

          • prole
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            51 year ago

            And here I thought I left reddit…

      • Cethin
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        61 year ago

        Well governments are made of people…

        If you’re assigning human traits to the building the government is in, sure it’s stupid. Recognizing the traits of the people representing the state is pretty normal though.

      • Gustavo
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        11 year ago

        Governments are made by humans so… I guess human traits carry over

            • Fazoo
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              1 year ago

              People of the Book absolutely applied to Jews. Ever heard of the Muslim prophets Noah, Moses, and Abraham? It is the main reason for them fleeing to Muslim countries during Christian persecutions of their communities. Second class, sure, but to say they were only mistreated is a blatant historical accuracy. Iran and Turkey are home to large Jewish communities to this day. Sephardic Jews, from Spain, were expelled by Catholics, after living for several hundred years under the Umayyad Caliphate.

              Iran’s issue is with the existence of a Jewish state. Not the existence of Jews in the world.

              Please educate yourself before acting like you know better. A basic Google search can literally disprove much of what you claim.

    • @ZeroEcks@lemmy.ml
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      151 year ago

      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

      • Karyoplasma
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        61 year ago

        With the protective gear they’re wearing, I’m pretty sure that you couldn’t murder your opponent even if you wanted to.

        The injury rate in fencing is just marginally higher than the injury rate in synchronized swimming or table tennis.

    • Venus [she/her]
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      91 year ago

      Did she think some random fencer was responsible for a war? Nationalists are so fucking insufferable

        • Venus [she/her]
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          61 year ago

          Only one side threw a tantrum over matters of basic courtesy in the competition over nationalism.

          In other words, “whataboutism”

                • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
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                  51 year ago

                  The official US policy to kill civilians. Between the coup and the proxy war we have more ukrainiajn blood on our hands than anyone. Did she shake a US competitor’s hand?

                • Venus [she/her]
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                  1 year ago

                  If you can’t behave civilly with another person you have no business swinging a sword at them. You should protest the event hosting them if you feel so strongly about it. You certainly shouldn’t be participating in the event. If you decide to show up and compete against the other person you’re already past all that, and now you need to behave civilly with them.

                  The point is, sure, there are people who don’t deserve respect. But respect is a necessary prerequisite for this kind of competition. If you can’t respect your opponent you shouldn’t be competing against them. You can’t disrespect them and also compete against them, you pick one or the other.

  • Farman [any]
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    581 year ago

    A reminder that we dont know if this is true or not. And if its true what really happened. Most western news on iran are like those on north korea greatly exagerated or completly made up.

      • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
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        1 year ago

        Qatar, and by extension of cash money also Al Jazeera, is very anti-Iran.

        I’m not seeing any news of this at all in Iranian media, which actually is fairly tabloid and weight lifting is a big thing in Iran. Even if you want to tell yourself the regime has absolute control over information, which isn’t true, they’d still need to provide a cover story due to the high profile nature of it and I don’t see one.

        Also Iranian social media is vibrant and also I don’t see anything in Persian but maybe I’m using the wrong search terms?

        All I see are the bbc and the telegraph and cnn etc etc etc repeating almost exactly the same story word for word.

        It seems like fake news to me. The classic case of one biased journalist writing a story, sending it to AP, and the entire western media just repeating the thing word for word because it’s free news inches and posting propaganda of this nature is oddly enough free in our modern system of journalism.

        It seems unlikely to actually be true to me. It seems more likely that it’s being syndicated without any critical enquiry because it agrees with the establishment narrative about Iran.

    • @dbilitated@aussie.zone
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      281 year ago

      the Iranian government? the one killing citizens who speak out against it or women who don’t wear a headscarf?

    • @figaro@lemdro.id
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      121 year ago

      Hey! So I very much understand wanting to take the side of people who are oppressed in some way.

      I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

      Your comment was unclear, and because of that people are taking it as you supporting the government of Iran. I think most sane people agree that they suck. The people though - they are some of the kindest people I have ever met, and do not deserve the violence that they have experienced.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
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        1 year ago

        I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

        On Hexbear we have seen this line of reasoning a hundred thousand times and so we just laugh now whenever we see it; I thought you were making a joke until I saw your instance.

        The cause of so much of the suffering of “repressive regimes” like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, the DPRK, etc is specifically because of the sanctions that the West puts on it that are designed to impoverish the people and try and make them overthrow their government, because they refuse to engage in the global economy according to the United States’s rules, and not really because of those “regimes” themselves. Of course, it’s taken for granted that what the United States wants is what everybody should want, but considering the billions being exploited abroad for tiny wages in hostile working environments for the West’s benefit, perhaps America’s “international rules-based order” isn’t the best for anybody except for the West themselves! Of course, America has all the military bases, and those countries do not, and bullets and bombs tend to be quite persuasive.

        For liberals, which I assume you are, these sanctions exist in a weird doublethink space. Working through it, liberals basically end up saying something contradictory like “The suffering that the people here are experiencing is because those countries are Bad. We need to put sanctions on Bad Countries. The sanctions aren’t what’s causing the suffering, it’s the Bad Countries’ fault (which thus implies sanctions don’t work and have little to no effect), but we still need to put sanctions on them to punish them (thus implying that sanctions do have some negative, disciplinary function).”

        Sanctions both do and do not function depending on the rhetorical frame you’re taking at any particular time. When you’re talking about the repression that Iranian women feel and why that sparked the protests, the sanctions will never be mentioned - this is purely Iran. When you’re talking about the fact that Cubans struggle with food insecurity and don’t have enough fuel and sometimes some of them protest or complain, then what caused those shortages is, again, never mentioned - it’s purely the Cuban regime. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about how repressive regimes must be punished in general, then westerners online clamour and shout for sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.

        This is why we laugh about such “support the people, not the government” rhetoric a lot of the time. Of course, in the case of Iran and similar countries, they aren’t left-wing and so we only really have critical support (in the sense of “they are better than those they are opposing, but they are not good in a vacuum”) and there is genuinely nuance about how the Iranian bourgeoisie are worsening conditions by exploiting the people, and repressive religious institutions, etc, but by and large American sanctions are the larger factor. In the case of Cuba, or the DPRK, such a line about supporting the people, not the government is quite ridiculous. Liberals (usually of the chud variety) who just come right out and say what they really mean - that, yes, the sanctions are explicitly designed to make the population overthrow the government so that Western compradors and corporations can loot it of its resources and exploit its people - are horrific monsters, but at least slightly refreshing compared to the mental knots that most liberals tie themselves in to not say that line explicitly, invoking “restoring democracy” and “fighting authoritarianism” and other such meaningless cliches instead.

        • @sunbeam60
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          51 year ago

          You didn’t need to write all that. You could have just said “I’m on hexbear” and you could have saved yourself and us some time.

          • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
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            1 year ago

            In future we will add a disclaimer:

            CONTENT WARNING THE FOLLOWING REPLY REQUIRES THAT YOU CONSIDER YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND THINK CRITICALLY

            Is that a reasonable compromise?

            This way you can maintain your thought free information bubble and we can still point out the ways in which mainstream propaganda shapes your world view, and you can just comfortably ignore it.

          • SoyViking [he/him]
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            261 year ago

            I made a comment on a Hexbear post and somebody from Hexbear replied back and now I’m angry.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
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            241 year ago

            Yes, but then how might you learn to be a better person if we, your kind hexagonal comrades, don’t help you?

          • Egon [they/them]
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            241 year ago

            Someone takes the time to write out a well-thought out and civil response to foster a good faith discussion, and this is how you answer? Why do you people wonder why you’re treated with hostility by hexbear users? Why do you choose to remain obtuse and condescending? Why are you this afraid of challenging your worldview?

            • @sunbeam60
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              1 year ago

              The discussion isn’t in good faith, though, and almost nothing is achieved. I would argue, without anything but personal observation as a basis, that 99% of non-hexbear users see 99% of hexbear comments as extremely inflammatory and that 99% of hexbear users see 99% of non-hexbear users as “libtards and chuds”.

              I am sure I could drink a couple of sensible pints with some hexbear users and have a good discussion in the pub, but online the greater internet fuckwad theory comes into play (from both “sides”). I would argue both hexbear and non-hexbear Lemmy were happier before you federated again. There is almost zero basis for finding consensus and an online forum isn’t the place to find it.

              On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of place in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.

              • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
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                1 year ago

                On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of pace in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.

                smuglord

                btw, we don’t in fact use ableist insults.

              • Egon [they/them]
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                1 year ago

                the discussion is in good faith.

                Says the person who just wrote a dismissive one sentence gotcha. You weren’t acting in good faith. Saying you were doesn’t matter, what matters I your actions.

                All the other stuff: it’s not that you’re wrong - everybody is wrong. It’s not that you disagree - everybody disagrees. It’s that you’re being a condescending dickhead that fails to engage with the arguments presented.
                If you behave the same way in person I doubt there’s any people willing to talk to you for an extended period of time.
                You could argue that hexbear users were wrong, but I wouldn’t give a shit about your argument, because it’s based on anything but your feelings. If that was something you actually cared about, you would have looked thru the thread discussing federation currently, and you’d see the consensus is that federation is a good thing.

                I’m gonna ban you all.

                Oh no! What will we do without your smug condescension! What will we do without your inputs based on no research! What will we do without your ableist language! ooooooooooooooh I war really looking forward to your next idiotic sentence dismissing a long and thought out post.

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
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            221 year ago

            If you don’t want to talk to someone from Hexbear don’t reply to someone from Hexbear’d comments for a start.

            Of course since you’re not OP it’s really not your place anyways to say which instances can and can’t respond to them.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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            221 year ago

            The person you were replying to before is also on Hexbear (and so am I, just to save you the trouble of pointing it out). It seems like we’re working with inconsistent standards here.

          • also can we just lose the “hexbear is so hostile for no reason” shtick. Every other instance is hostile and has its trolls, the only difference is that there are for more of us than you.

            • @sunbeam60
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              11 year ago

              With the greatest of respect, and in my personal opinion, hexbear users have the reputation they deserve.

              • Egon [they/them]
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                11 year ago

                Lmao you only receive hostility when you’re a condescending dickhead. Every time I see people complain about hostility I just look thru their comments and - yup - they started it by writing some smug gotcha, and then instead of engaging with people arguing in good faith, they kept going down that path. Why do you think you deserve to be treated in good faith, when you yourself cannot do the same? Civility is a two-way street

                • @sunbeam60
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                  1 year ago

                  I completely agree civility is a two way street. I also agree that I have started to dismiss users from hexbear apriori. I’m a very courteous person generally and I’m not happy to engage in these discussions with hexbear users (I’ve done it a few times by now and my sole purpose isn’t to convince hexbear users that I’m right, which I never could, but to convince others that Lemmy isn’t just full of “so left-wing you’ve flipped to right-wing” hexbears. In some ways I feel it’s a fight for the soul of the wider Lemmy community. I’m but a drop in that wider ocean, but I wish more people would speak up against the extreme viewpoints you generally espouse. If the tone doesn’t change, I’ll probably drop off and see myself out.

      • Awoo [she/her]
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        1 year ago

        In various circumstances critical support of problematic governments is support of the people when harm to their state by outside actors will bring harm to those people. Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America’s fault and that the change it needs won’t come from outside of it, particularly when the people using various problems as a political weapon do not have the improvement of the lives of the people as their goal but instead various other geopolitical and resource interests.

        The most recent historical example of this would be Syria, with Libya a close second and Iraq a close third. All of which are objectively worse off thanks to western interventionism.

        You can and should oppose interventionism and outside actors fucking with the situation there if you do care about the people, while also not defending the theocracy and support real local political movements for change (ie the ones not funded by NED or various other cia or nato affiliated intermediaries).

        • Acid
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          271 year ago

          I’d only change one thing and say most of the problems for Iran started because of the UK/US being imperialistic and has never recovered as a result

          • Awoo [she/her]
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            141 year ago

            Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America’s fault

            I’m not sure what I said differently here, I was referring to the historical events of US backed revolution and bombings that led to the existing Iran when I wrote the above. Modern Iran exists because America wanted to stop us socialists from getting power there. Everyone on this website should remind themselves of this when they see anticommunists screaming about “tankies”. Anticommunism leads to backing the far right consistently throughout history.

    • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
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      101 year ago

      Yeah usually I find it absurd when anti Israel (Israel, for the lobs reading this, is a murderous fascistic apartheid state actively doing a genocide) stuff is painted as antisemitism, but this is sure seems to be

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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        151 year ago

        What makes this antisemitic? As far as I can tell, the issue is that the other competitor was an official representative of Israel, not that they were Jewish

    • @blackbelt352@lemmy.sdf.org
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      341 year ago

      Yeah none of that politics stuff like how Jackie Robinson playing baseball definitely wasn’t political, and the US vs Soviets 1980 Olympics definitely wasn’t politically charged, and people definitely were expressing their dislike of the Soviets during the game or the entire point of the Olympics being a peaceful gathering of nation states for competition ia definitely not political, or all the taxpayer money that goes to building stadiums also isnt political, or that the owners of sports teams are politically active isnt… political. Oh… wait.

        • @blackbelt352@lemmy.sdf.org
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          41 year ago

          Eh I tend to find that nothing is truly apolitical. Everything that exists is affected by politics. If you start looking you can find how politics plays a role in everything.

          Like this bottle of Coke I’m currently drinking. The corn syrup used in it is super cheap because the agriculture industry is heavily subsidized to grow corn, the logos and branding falls under trademark and copyright law, the plastic that makes up the bottle has regulations on the types of plastic used and can only use food safe plastics, and that plastic is a product of petroleum, so fossilr fuel lobbying isninvolved too, the water that Coca Cola uses could very well have come from a source that was plundered by a PMC (look up Nestle for that one) and stolen from locals. And then just because I throw the bottle into recycling, doesn’t mean as soon as it leaves my hand that it’s properly handled along the entire processing and doesn’t just end up in a landfill anyway. And that’s not talking about all the different lobbyists from all the various industries that play a role in making, shipping and disposing of a bubbly brown liquid in a bottle made of polymerization petroleum.

          • @Knusper@feddit.de
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            11 year ago

            I do agree, but I also imagine, they did not literally mean that politics should never occur in all of sports.

            They probably meant that sports competitions should be held with mutual respect, independent of politics. If you can’t shake someone’s hand, you’re not either going to be cool with them winning, so there’s a big risk of you not competing fairly. That’s the bare minimum where politics need to be kept out of sports.

  • @krayj@sh.itjust.works
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    351 year ago

    They are opposed to even the most basic form of civility. Yeah, we already knew that, this just makes it clear to the doubters.

  • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
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    171 year ago

    This sounds fake to me. I know the media always lies to make the state department happy so I shouldn’t be surprised. I am just no used to them putting out propaganda in this direction

    • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Why does it sound fake? Iran’s made its position on Israeli athletes quite clear. It will not allow its athletes to compete with Israeli athletes.

    • @bh11235@infosec.pub
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      11 year ago

      That is a perfectly coherent take for 1994 and even for 2015, but these last years Israel has been aligning itself more and more with the anti-US axis in its spirit and rhetoric. The US says “we approve of this, we disapprove of that” and the Israeli elected government responds “who are you to criticize us after what you did in Iraq and Afghanistan?”, like if Putin were there in the flesh he could not have been more on-brand. Geopolitically right now Israel wants to be Hungary, and the only thing preventing that is the historical accident of spending all those years as a US proxy state, and all the strings that came attached to that. And some people waving flags and whining “we liked it as a US proxy state” but clearly no one cares about them.

      I am not saying you can’t make an argument for that succinct manifesto above, just that it used to be self-explanatory how one part is exactly aligned with the other, and nowadays it’s much less self-explanatory than it used to be, and that’s a point of interest.