El Jones and Jonathan Liew decode how sportswashing works and why Israel is struggling to use it

This episode comes out at a time when the movement for Palestinian liberation is relentlessly holding groups accountable for supporting and whitewashing the state of Israel's annihilationist violence against Gaza's people. The shaming of companies, states and cities for their complicity and quietism on Gaza has reached a fever pitch. Here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Tennis Canada was set to play Team Israel in the Davis Cup, but the event was closed to spectators as a result of public pressure (although the reasons cited were related to "security," a refrain that Jones says should be identified as anti-Palestinian racism). Can we see professional sports are inherently political? And how do we understand the sort of political maneuvering pariah states are doing to launder their reputations through "sportswashing"? Professional sport is a symbolic activity that is clearly important for defining who we are and where our moral limits lie, but it is also, as Liew stresses, an escapist experience that's meant to inspire awe and joy at seeing the feats that people are capable of when in competition with each other. But we need to start from the position that sportswashing is an attempt to sideline the legitimate political demands of millions of people globally: demands, in this case, that Palestine be free from this tyranny. In Liew's words, "The primary objective of Israeli sporting diplomacy is that when you hear the country’s name, you won’t think of any of this. You won’t think about military checkpoints or the bombing of Gaza or the Palestinian occupation, or really Palestinians at all. Instead you’ll think about golden beaches, rooftop cocktails, Lionel Messi and Chris Froome bathed in a glorious sunset."Tennis Canada could have stood on the side of justice. The International Tennis Federation could also have aligned with countless legal experts globally in identifying what Israel is doing as abhorrent and unacceptable, worthy of boycott and having athletes barred from international events. A genocide is unfolding before our eyes.Jones ultimately comes back to this question: how, given that this is happening in a way that is visible, visceral and almost too horrific to articulate, do professional communicators, journalists, political leaders and others convince themselves to keep lying by pretending this is normal?