Dear Riyadi, The Turkish Flag Raised To Tease Homentmen Wasn’t Photoshopped, And Yes It’s Despicable

It says a lot when the knee-jerk reaction to something as disgusting as this is to cry foul and call photoshop instead of calling out those who did that.

It says even more that the men who were holding the Turkish flags weren’t even holding them right: they were just there to tease the Armenian team the team they’re supporting was playing.

I posted the above pictures on my blog’s Facebook page and was immediately inundated by replies that it was photoshopped. No, it wasn’t. Not only was it shared by one of Al Riyadi’s top Facebook fan pages, but a little zooming in and you can see the person holding the flag. Some even tried to defend it. Anything to save face? No, just no.

Perhaps it’s a good thing to have a “it’s photoshopped” reflex in order not to raise tensions, but when faced with evidence that it’s not, the right route is to own up to it and apologize to the team you were playing whose entire history you insulted, to those who support that team whose ancestral struggles you’ve insulted and to your fellow citizens whose fight is a daily, yearly thing to have their genocide recognized. And all for what? Teasing?

There’s a whole other level of disgraceful when you have to sink to such low levels and then try to justify it. Turkey is a good friend to Lebanon? Yes, but that’s not the place to celebrate that. People wanted to commemorate the memory of our victims at Istanbul’s Reina attacks? Really now, against an Armenian team, during a basketball game that followed a period during which organizers for both teams wanted to deviate tensions?

The fact of the matter is that Turkish flag was intentional, and that picture was authentic and the act was despicable. It was even preceded by fans making that “joke” on social media over and over again:

But it’s not a joke. It’s not funny. What it is is disgusting, disgraceful, hurtful and despicable.

To set an example, Al-Riyadi should identify whoever those fans were and ban them from attending future games of the team in order to set an example. It’s easy to dismiss such acts as goofy play, but we’ve experienced them way too often and fans of multiple teams have been banned from courts so repeatedly for things to remain as is. Sometimes, such as this time, you have to call out things as they are so people know that doing them isn’t worth the laughs they got with the bros or that surge of pride they felt when they pulled that flag out of their pocket mid-game.

This is about the mentality that would push a supporter of a particular team, in this case Al Riyadi Beirut, to figure it’s a good idea to insult Armenians in the worst way possible by bringing a Turkish flag to a game and not even hold it properly, or the mentality of a Sagesse supporter chanting Islamophobic slogans just because they can. The examples are endless, and they’ve been thoroughly documented.

I’m 100% certain that this is not what all Al-Riyadi supporters are like as many of my friends are supporters of that particular team and they would never be in such poor taste as to pull a similar stunt. I’m also positive that such stunts do not paint the picture of the entirety of Lebanon’s basketball fans. However, with sectarian and political slogans becoming as part of the game as the ball, isn’t it high time for the entirety of the game to be re-assessed?

Disgusting Lebanese Basketball

I used to follow Lebanese basketball as much as I can. I supported Sagesse. Not because of the party they are apparently affiliated with but because I grew up in a house that supported them because it had alumnus from that school and – for a while – they were the best.

However, I believe I’m not the only one who finds Lebanese sports in general and basketball in particular, seeing as it’s the most popular Lebanese sport, to be downright disgusting lately. Even our football league is miserable – not that it was in better shape before. Check this link out.

Every single game to be held lately has to be postponed for some amount of time in order to get the fans to cool off… politically, even the games of teams many thought were irrelevant or had no political backing. Even the Lebanese president now has his own basketball applaud squad in the form of the Amchit team. And here I was thinking I was way behind the times in not knowing Champville was FPM-centric.

I’ve been so disassociated from what was happening actually that I had no idea until recently about all the major scandals that were taking place, most of which were politically coated sport affairs. Most of them revolved around my former go-to team Sagesse and a growing rivalry with Champville with some businessmen thrown in the fold. The “scandal” was all about the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement. Then try to tell a supporter of either parties who’s absolutely elated by what went down that this isn’t how things should go: “Man, l ouwet reb7et...” or “Shou baddna, 3al tayyar ma bi3alle2.”

Every single team playing today has a go-to political affiliation. They are not playing the game, they’re playing for their politician. If they win, they bring his reputation pride. If they lose, it’s his reputation that’s on the line. But fear not, the “supporters” will wreck havoc and make sure no one takes their political affiliation lightly.

But Lebanon’s basketball league is but an absolutely minute representation of the even more disgusting state of Lebanese politics today: the election law “talks” leading to nowhere, the visits between smiling foes when you know they are bottling in every single curse word known to man, the ultra tense mood regarding everything there is. We’re not getting anywhere. Deadlines are looming. And here we are applauding.

The tension on the courts is the tension on the streets. The words going across fields are the words we hear on TV. The slogans shouted are a regurgitation of the ones our politicians franchise.

Talk about sportsmanship. At least someone mathematically wins in basketball. Lebanese politics, on the other hand, is all in the eye of the beholder supporter.

Lebanese Basketball Player Scores 113 Points in One Game – Makes US Headlines

NBA, MSN, AOL, Newsday you name it….

I haven’t watched Lebanese Basketball since Sagesse went down the drain – it’s just not that interesting anymore. But everyone is talking about how Mohammad El Akkari scored 113 points to lead his team, Mouttahed, to a win over Bejjeh on Wednesday. Out of those 113 points, 32 were 3-point shots – out of 59 attempts that is.

Akkari’s previous averages were 7.6 points a game. So I have no idea how he managed what he did. But according to sport experts, he’s the first person in a long, long time to manage over 100 points in a single basketball game. Call it impressive, call it fishy, at least he’s making the news rounds.