"I haven't even surfed in the ocean growing up. It's so mental."
In some pretty emotional scenes at Newcastle, the Israeli surfer Anat Lelior has become the first Israeli surfer to qualify for the world tour, prompting an outpouring of love from some of the biggest names in the biz including sexy senior Shane Dorian, ageless surf god Brad Gerlach and multi-pronged world champ Carissa Moore.
Mercifully, the usual platoons of Jew-haters were mostly absent with one comment, Free Palestine, generating a little push-back, something y’wouldn’t have seen one year ago.
“I haven’t even surfed in the ocean growing up. It’s so mental,” Anat Lelior said. “I didn’t know a girl from Israel would make it.”
Indeedy, it was one year ago when Israeli surfers, including Anat Lelior, asked the WSL to remove their nationality and flag against their names at a Qualifying event in Morocco citing security concerns.
Moroccans, as the worldly among us already know, have a comprehensive history of slaying the infidel, both at home and overseas. Moroccans, particularly from the diaspora in Europe have starred in major attacks, usually as part of al-Qaeda or ISIS network.
A non-exhaustive list of attacks by Islamists in Morocco might include the 2003 Casablanca bombings when a group of suicide bombers from the city’s slums hit five locations in the pretty city, including a Jewish community centre. The attacks killed 45 people and injured over 100.
Four years later, a suicide bomber detonated at an internet café, killing himself and injuring others. Four weeks later, three bombers blew themselves up near the U.S. Consulate and a cultural center, with one civilian casualty. Four days after that, two suicide bombers detonated near a police station, injuring one officer.
All that splatter for nothing!
In 2011, a bomb exploded at the Argana Café in Jemaa el-Fna square, which is a real popular tourist spot in Marrakech, killing 17 people (including 10 foreigners) and injuring over 20.
In 2018, two Scandinavian backpackers were murdered, beheaded if you wanna to be precise, in the Atlas Mountains. The murderers posted a video of the beheadings online.
Abroad! Very busy!
Moroccans were over represented in the Islamist cell that killed 191 people and injured over 1800 in the Madrid bombings of 2004.
The coordinated attacks in Paris in 2015, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds more was the plan of the Moroccan-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud,
The following year, Moroccans hit Brussels Airport and a Brussels metro station, killing 32 and injuring over 300.
In 2017, a cell of Moroccan-origin youths from Ripoll, Spain, were behind the van attack in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas killing 13 and injured over 100. A few hours after knocking over pedestrians in Barcelona, another terrorist drove through a crowd in Cambrils, one hundred clicks away, killing one.
That same year a Moroccan went wild with a knife in Finland, killing two and injuring eight.
Phew!
So you could understand why someone like the two-time Olympian from Tel Aviv might want to fly under the radar in Morocco.
Anyway, she’s qualified for the world tour, congrats etc, and as the tour only hits one country with Sharia Law, the UAE, and that might be cancelled ’cause of Trump’s Mullah takedown, the Degel Yisrael can fly proudly.
Warms the heart, yes?