Canada’s decision to host Israel in the 2025 Davis Cup is a blatant example of sports-washing—a tactic used by apartheid regimes to whitewash their crimes through international prestige. By allowing Israel to compete on Canadian soil while it wages a brutal and ongoing campaign of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid against the Palestinian people, Tennis Canada is complicit in normalizing state violence. Just as global sporting bodies expelled apartheid South Africa, there is a growing demand that Israel be held to the same standard. This match is not neutral, it is political. It offers Israel another platform to rebrand itself while Palestinian athletes are denied basic freedoms, bombed in their homes, and barred from traveling to compete.
The Kick Out Apartheid campaign, aligned with the broader BDS movement, calls on fans, athletes, and communities to reject complicity and build grassroots pressure to end apartheid. Canada cannot continue to present itself as a defender of human rights while providing legitimacy to an apartheid regime on the international stage. Tennis Canada must be held accountable, and sponsors must be confronted for their silence. As in other global anti-apartheid struggles, people of conscience must seize this moment to disrupt business-as-usual. That means organizing protests, raising awareness in Halifax and beyond, and demanding that apartheid has no place in sport—or anywhere.
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/tennis/canada-israel-davis-cup-world-group1-tie-halifax-1.7535769
