World Rugby rules South Africa’s exclusion of Israel from global competition was not discrimination

JTA — Rugby’s global governing body has determined that the South African Rugby Union’s decision to disinvite an Israeli team from an international competition last month was not discriminatory.

But the CEO of the Israeli team isn’t buying the argument that the cancelation had to do with security threats, as South Africa argued and World Rugby concluded.

“We expected World Rugby to take a closer look at the events leading up to the withdrawal of the invitation,” Tel Aviv Heat CEO Pete Sickle told JTA. “We still have not seen tangible evidence of credible and significant threats to public safety. We haven’t seen any evidence of SARU or South African security forces analyzing those threats before making this decision.”

The inquiry by the governing body followed South Africa Rugby’s announcement Feb. 3 that the Tel Aviv Heat team was no longer invited to a March 24 competition. The decision came after pressure from the South African BDS Coalition, an affiliate of the Palestinian BDS National Committee that promotes the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

At the time, South Africa Rugby’s CEO said that after listening to “the opinions of important stakeholder groups,” the decision had been made to disinvite Tel Aviv “to avoid the likelihood of the competition becoming a source of division, notwithstanding the fact that Israel is a full memb