On Draymond Green’s ‘Friends of the IDF’ Trip to Israel

USCPR Executive Director Yousef Munayyer spoke to The Nation’s Dave Zirin for an article about NBA star Draymond Green’s “Friends of the IDF” propaganda trip to Israel:

I asked Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a coalition of 330+ groups that “works for a US policy toward Palestine/Israel based on freedom, justice, and equality,” for his analysis of the visit.

He said, “Draymond Green is the latest celebrity to be posterized by Israeli apartheid. It was a sad sight to see him collaborating with an effort aimed at normalizing Palestinian human-rights denial and selling it to his fans around the world. With great celebrity comes great responsibility, and unfortunately Draymond allowed his celebrity to be used in ways unbecoming of a champion of freedom, justice, and equality. I hope that he may reflect on this and that his peers in the sports world will learn from this and avoid at all costs any offers to normalize Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. The Israeli state has made the cooptation of American sports heroes into a key part of their strategy to appeal to demographics alienated by their human-rights abuses. The least our sports heroes can do is listen to the Palestinians asking them not to play along.”