By Cédric Callier (with AFP)
Published 51 minutes ago, Updated 12 minutes ago
Emilie Gomis Federico Pestellini / Federico Pestellini / Panoramic
While the Cojo Ethics Committee requested her exclusion, the former basketball player made it known that she would not resign from her role as ambassador, and she could even take the matter to court.
The start of a long standoff? This is the turn that the controversy surrounding Emilie Gomis, ambassador of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, seems to be taking in the hot seat after an Instagram publication about Israel which led the Ethics Committee of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (COJO ) requested his exclusion. Except that the former basketball player has since made it known that she did not count “resign“, recognizing a “clumsiness» while reaffirming his desire to continue his role.
In a press release published Tuesday, Emilie Gomis’ lawyers, Maîtres William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, write that the sportswoman “was at no time asked to explain» before the decision of the Ethics Committee, contacted by the organizers of the Paris Olympics. They add that they have already been mandated “to take any action against a possible sanction that would be taken against him“. For her part, via a press release, the former international “s’estimate […] dishonored and defamed by accusations of anti-Semitism of which she is a victim“, and she “intends to remain at the service of the values of Olympism and France as it has always done».
Two days after the attacks perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on October 7, Emilie Gomis briefly published a message in which we saw maps of France from 1947, 1967 and 2023, on which the tricolor flag covering French territory is gradually replaced by the Israeli flag, with this question: “What would you do in this situation?» A publication that “clearly refers to events concerning the State of Israel and Palestine, in particular the Gaza Strip, notably the plan for the partition of Palestine by the United Nations in 1947, the Six-Day War and the vote of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967», recalled the Ethics Committee on Monday. And she “can also be legitimately interpreted as suggesting that the France of 2023, whose map is dominated by the Star of David, is also invaded by Jews».
The lawyers of the Olympic vice-champion with Les Bleues in 2012, also a member of the board of directors of Paris 2024, recall that the principal concerned had deleted “immediately» his post once «alerted to its inadequacy». «She now recognizes that if the post was clumsy“, because she notably did not have “explained his approach», «it simply sought to fuel a debate of general interest on the problem of colonization, widely documented and criticized, in particular by the UN», we can still read.
While Emilie Gomis had apologized a few weeks ago, again on Instagram, the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France) asked that she be removed from her position as ambassador. And according to the ethics committee, his apologies “are not likely to mitigate, in this case, the seriousness of the breach noted», knowing that the members and employees of Paris-2024 must “to respect a duty of reserve in their public expression“. It is now up to Cojo to make a decision. Knowing now that the case could not stop there and continue in court, if the former basketball player actually decides to defend herself.
SEE ALSO – The Hamburg goalkeeper’s improbable own goal against Sankt Pauli in German D2 on December 1 (2-2)
”
data-script=”
>
