“I will not just shut up and dribble… I get to sit up here and talk about what’s really important.” So proclaimed LeBron James in 2018 when confronted with the question of whether athletes have the right to speak about the political and social justice questions of their time.Yet since 7 October 2023, elite athletes in North America have had startlingly little to say about what most human rights groups in the world, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations have characterized as Israel’s genocide in Gaza (a situation currently in flux due to a mutually agreed upon ceasefire and prisoner exchange).To be sure, there have been some exceptions, including the righteously incandescent commentary of the WNBA’s Natasha Cloud, the organizing of Athletes for Ceasefire, Olympic medalist Moh Ahmed’s decision to sign a letter opposing Israel’s involvement in Davis Cup tennis, some oblique references from the NBA’s Kyrie Irving and Jaylen Brown, a symbolic gesture from NFLer Azeez Al-Shaair, and the recent decision of Canadian cyclist Derek Gee to end a contract with an Israeli-affiliated team.In fact, the most significant moment in North American sport may not come from an athlete at all, but, rather, a courageous dancer at the Super Bowl half-time show in 2024.

Still, in sum, the silence of athletes has been rather deafening.Indeed, for his part, James’ only contribution to the discourse has been a statement of support for Israel.Otherwise, athletes have largely chosen to shut up and dribble.However, in December 2023, former NBA player and Guardian contributor Etan Thomas provided a window into how many NBA players actually feel, noting that in response to his own public comments on Gaza he received “over a dozen messages from different active NBA players and even more from retired NBA players thanking me”.One anonymized player told him, “Their oppression is too forreal !! It’s just evil!” while another explained, “I was actually advised by my agent to stay far away from this topic unless I wanted the Kyrie treatment….

Hard to admit we’ve been hoodwinked our entire lives on Israel and if we say anything, we’re labeled anti semitic smh.”In order to better understand what is going on around athlete activism and Gaza, we spoke to seven current and former athletes.Some players we spoke to were granted anonymity to protect them from reprisal for their comments.US Olympic trial runner Jesse Joseph was frank about his despair at the situation: “It’s been hard seeing the silence from so much of the professional running world, especially knowing that many of these athletes truly do want an end to the slaughter but don’t want to speak out on a public stage.… Athletes for the Palestinian national teams in multiple sports have been killed by Israel, yet most of the sporting world appears to be totally fine entering into competition with Israeli teams as if everything were normal.

”He noted that “there are many pressures that prevent athletes from speaking out - fear of losing sponsorships, general fear of backlash, and fear of repression.”Another US Olympic trial runner, echoed this point: “It’s the conversations that don’t happen, and the impacts felt in the shadows that I’ve just had to accept.You never know if you’ll get passed up for a job, if you’re ending up on some surveillance list, or if it’s just a silent backing away of support that will make itself known in the future.”Still, Joseph underlined, compared to sport, in “other cultural fields that have similar pressures such as the film industry, people have been more outspoken.It helps to have a critical mass of voices.

There’s safety and solidarity in numbers.”One of the issues we asked the athletes we spoke to about was whether players are being specifically counseled not to speak.A current athlete and former Olympian told us, “I have not been counseled at all.But, hey, I am not LeBron James.”His perspective is that what athletes struggle with most “is that focus on their sport and how they balance that with their political activism.

And how they can signal to their sponsor, ‘Hey, my head is still in the game despite all the stuff I might be involved outside of it,’ and I think that is probably the most telling on whether or not a company fully pulls funding or not.Or resorts to silencing tactics.”Sponsorship, as every athlete we spoke to mentioned, is a critical issue.Nikki Dryden, two-time Olympic swimmer and human rights lawyer, told us, “Some athletes have morality clauses in their sporting contracts or sponsorship contracts, and whether this issue would be included or not, the fear that it could be used will silence some.These disrepute clauses are very broad and use threats and intimidation to keep athletes from speaking out.

At the Olympics for example, if you violate anything in your athlete agreement you are threatened with having your Olympic results erased...think about Manizha Talash, a 20-year-old refugee who was literally kicked out of the village by the IOC and left on her own on the streets of Paris!”A recently active NFL player echoed this concern: “I would guarantee that sponsors are part of the reason players don’t speak out about Gaza.Talking about homophobia is a piece of cake compared to talking about Israel in this moment.

Sponsors are comfortable about that.When it comes to the war on Gaza, that feels way way more like there will be consequences to sponsorship for speaking out on the ‘wrong’ side.”In the most striking case of the players we spoke to, a women’s professional basketball player told us, “As a professional, one thing I did have to navigate was firing my agent, as it was revealed to me through her instagram stories that she was a raging Zionist, spreading false propaganda and frankly racist narratives that painted Palestinians as ‘savage’ or ‘terrorists’.This agent was/is a highly respected and well connected agent in the women’s basketball space, so maybe in theory I could be missing out on some brand deals, or playing opportunities.Maybe there are also opportunities I am not even aware I am missing out on due to my stance on Gaza, given there are a lot of powerful people in the NBA and WNBA who are Zionists.

”“But,” the player added, “I feel much more satisfied standing on my principles and using my platform to speak out against a genocide that will go down in history as one if not the worst human rights abuses of our lifetime.”The former NFL player told us that one area of principal concern is the prospect of being labeled antisemitic.He told us, “When it comes to someone speaking about Israel, I think it is something that gets escalated because of the assumption of antisemitism.There seems to be socially a ranking of which issues are okay, and it seems like in the last hundred years, antisemitism has shot up that list.“Even if someone is incredibly well-educated on Gaza and also feel in a way that is left-leaning and feeling that there is a genocide and the reaction to October 7 is vastly overdone,” he continued, “I think there is hesitance to speaking out on that because people have had to walk back things based on investorship and thinks like that.

It seems like a less normalized topic than something like gay marriage.… I think Israel in our country has been thought of as the victim because of the Holocaust for so long, it seems illogical that they would become the perpetrator of similar crimes.”A former international soccer player elaborated: “When you say, ‘Why are innocent people being murdered and maimed en masse?’ and the narrative gets flipped, and you are called ‘antisemitic,’ that’s gaslighting.That’s a tactic, it’s a form of deflection back at other people as if they’re the problem.” Similarly, the WNBA player noted that others are “afraid/confused by the antisemetic label.

”Backlash and harassment are another significant and associated issue.The Olympian pointed to “the backlash on social media and the constant harassment and inundation and noise that brings with it,” adding that “there is an overarching narrative in the general population that athletes are supposed to be these entertainers and national representatives of all the people of the nation and as such they should really take this approach of ‘shut up and play.’”The basketball player we spoke to highlighted the dangers of “the McCarthyist response from government” and “Zionists gaslighting and doxxing people,” but also drew on personal experiences in college.“I would post as much info on my story as I could, which sometimes led to locker room discussions by teammates who had engaged in pretty good faith.I always knew that there was the chance of higher ups within my college program, coaches, administration, or donors, taking issue with what I had to say.

One of the first instances of direct intimidation was when a family member of mine received threats from parents of a player on the team.This instance, amongst others, never discouraged my conviction to speak up.Again, I always felt that any lost opportunity in my career pales in comparison to what Gaza’s people are enduring.”The former international soccer player suggested that this issue is emblematic of systemic problems in sport more broadly: “Most athletes learn early that compliance is rewarded and that truth, or questioning the status quo, is punished.This conditioning does not just preserve order; it protects exploitation.

Silencing happens quietly, through the fear of losing sponsorship, selection, or reputation, and through the violence of online attacks.Many fear being branded as something they are not, or accused of causing harm simply for naming it.I know this from decades of witnessing and experiencing these same patterns of behaviour in sport and beyond.The question is not just why athletes are not speaking out; it is what kind of culture and leadership ecosystem we have built, and who we have become within it, when silence feels like our best and only option.And in the end, what do we lose within our humanity in the process?”Former Olympian Dryden notes that this sort of potential backlash can lead to “some of the same fear, apprehension, confusion that many people are struggling with around the history of the region and a worry that they will say the wrong thing and be attacked in the media.

” Part of the problem is that “many athletes are young and don’t always have time (or interest) to be educated on complex issues.” The recent NFL player felt similarly, noting that “Although Israel has gone down this road for decades, the conflict feels new to my generation in the US, whereas we are much more aware of other struggles like gay rights.”Then too there is the relative financial precarity of Olympic athletes.This can lead to different perspectives.The still-active Olympian told us that “perhaps political activism is tolerated in Olympic sports because the financial consequences are not as severe for business as they are for the NBA and NFL or whatever.

” Dryden, by contrast, herself a former Olympian, felt that for Olympic athletes, “we are living on the financial margins already and live in a state of just feeling grateful for the opportunity...Sadly, this has a tendency to keep us silent and compliant.”The WNBA is a particularly interesting case.

Although Natasha Cloud has been among the most outspoken active athletes in the world against the genocide, it is striking how little her colleagues have said on the subject despite their established record of social justice activism.The basketball player we spoke to tried to unpack for us why that might be.“For some reason, the courage to speak on Palestine seems to me like maybe it takes another degree of courage and also awareness,” she told us.“It’s an international issue and I think Americans tend to fail hard in that arena [with the] ‘I don’t know enough’ cop out, plus years of ant-Muslim and xenophobic propaganda, ‘the Middle East is always at war,’ ‘it’s too complicated,’ etc… I think some people maybe just like to think ‘it’s none of our business,’ whereas something like Black Lives Matter is very close to home and people feel empowered to speak on it as a predominantly Black league.”But, there is another dimension as well: direct familiarity with the Israeli context.

She explained, “there is a good amount of women’s basketball players who have played in Israel!! I know multiple people playing there right now….[thumbs down emoji].Which is insane to me but some people really just keep their head down, I guess? Like I know a lottt of W players have played there in their overseas career.So you have that experience and obviously the propaganda they take in, they pay well, etc.”She contrasted this to Natasha Cloud, who, she said, “played a season in Jordan.

Which is a country with a good amount of Palestinian refugees.And I know for a fact that played a role in her stance because she said somewhere that her teammates in Jordan taught her about the conflict! Which is amazing.”Part of the frustration of athlete silence for Jesse Joseph is how impactful they could be.He remarked on the success of fans and local runner in pressuring Saucony to drop sponsorship of the Jerusalem Marathon “which runs through Occupied East Jerusalem” and the Denver Colfax Marathon to drop Chevron as a sponsor on grounds of genocide complicity.“Connecting with and amplifying the organizing of these local athletes and communities would be an incredible way to use the platform that high profile athletes have,” Joseph told us.

Still, over two years of genocide, such leadership by athletes has been far more exception than rule.As the former international soccer player put it, “In 2022, when many people were speaking about migrant workers’ rights, Fifa just said that the players had to play, which of course is incorrect.Because it is political, it is about power.When you say ‘stay in your lane and just dribble,’ you’re saying don’t take our power away.”Unfortunately, when it comes to Gaza, too many players have listened.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick.Derek Silva is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University.They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game and co-hosts, with Johanna Mellis, of The End of Sport podcast.