South Sydney, as expected, triumphed, as spectators saw the rare sight of Eric Simms making a try-saving tackle on Johnny King, and the marginally rarer sight of a Jewish first-grade Rugby League player, Mark Shulman, who played as halfback for St George.

Sydney’s most visible and obnoxious self-styled Nazi, Ross May, known as "The Skull", was at the game in his role as a fanatical supporter of the St George Dragons.

When a Jewish player was directing attack and defence of the team he supported, The Skull was temporarily confused, perhaps conflicted, before determining that he could reconcile yelling antisemitic abuse at one team-member while urging on the other twelve to carry out acts of unusual barbarity on their opponents.

Rugby League has become much more visibly ethnically and nationally diverse since that time and I have no particular knowledge of, or interest in, how the Skull copes with St George Illawarra players of many backgrounds, or the nature of some of the other teams and spectators he would face if he still attends League games.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to attend the events at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, would have also been aware that our waves of immigration have contributed Australian representatives in a variety of sporting disciplines.

At least one of them, diver Loudy Tourky, apparently was born in Israel.

The reason I say apparently is, although she was born in Haifa, she told New Idea magazine that she was in fact born in Palestine. As her age was given as 23 in July 2002, Haifa had been part of Israel for more than thirty years prior to her birth.

Except for the most blatant and unashamed maximalists, no one would publicly express the view that Haifa is somehow wrongly located in Israel, sitting where it does on the Mediterranean coast.

Whether Loudy or her parents, Afaf and Butros, like it, if she was born in Haifa and is 23, she was born in Israel.

According to the New Idea story, she left Haifa as a three-year-old, meaning that her family may well have been living in Israel for 34 years under the misapprehension they were either still in the British Mandate of Palestine or with the view that no State of Israel had ever been established.

Loudy, described as a student at Sydney University, made a number of comments about "Palestine" in the interview, centred around the statement "I will always have a bond with Palestine. My life is here but it’s in the back of my mind".

Her Mother, Afaf, said that, by the Athens Olympics in 2004, she hoped "things will have settled in Palestine and then it’s only a matter of hopping on the plane - one and a half hours from Athens to Haifa!" Her Father Butros added "We wish that there will be peace and we can go".

If the Tourkys believe that a peace settlement will place Haifa in Palestine, it would appear that they believe that "peace" is not something which the Palestinians should make with Israel but establish in place of Israel.

Of course, it is possible that New Idea accidentally inserted the word "Palestine" for Israel, but that appears less likely than the Tourky family having been accurately reported being inaccurate, given that Afaf had earlier signed an internet petition circulated by the Israel-abolitionists of "rightofreturn.org".

In signing that petition, Afaf wrote "Khuloud (Loudy) is representing Australia at the 2000 Olympic games in three events within spring-board and platform diving. We hope that one day ‘very soon’ she will be able to represent Palestine."

While the New Idea article may have been an example of the celebrity status of a talented diver being exploited by those with a maximalist nationalist barrow to push, it is far from being the only recent item which combined elements of both sport and politics.

At this year’s Wimbledon, spectators saw the unique sight of a tennis pairing featuring one player from Pakistan and the other from Israel.

Aisam Ul-Huq Qureshi hails from a country which has no ties with, and a very hostile attitude towards, Israel.

It is Pakistan which has Israel in its political sights and not the other way around, and one would have to draw a long bow indeed to portray Israel as any form of threat to Pakistan. Nonetheless, Qureshi was threatened with sanctions, including a ban, for forming a team with Amir Hadad.

Hadad’s comments, as quoted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, were "I didn’t even think about Qureshi being a Muslim until I went home and found it was news in Israel that a Jew was playing with a Muslim … I just thought of him as another tennis player, a human being …"

One hopes that Qureshi, rather than being punished, is recognised for not having allowed the prejudices of his government to dictate his playing partner and will be one of many who were able to break-down, rather than reinforce, barriers between peoples.

It is also to be hoped that New Idea editors recognise that, regardless of what they are told by interviewees, Israel is a reality and it includes Haifa!