Barry Shaw – The Olympic Games and the Jewish People
The Olympic Games is a metaphor for the world. Here you see the behavior of nations, good and bad.
Here we saw Israelis and Jews slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists on prime time television. While Israel was bringing the bodies of our finest back home for burial the Games barely missed a beat and, today, the non-state of Palestine is allowed to participate even as they reject the notion of living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel, and even as the Israeli athletes gather at the Olympic Village to remember their fallen sporting comrades.
Even so, we turn up to participate in the spirit of the Olympics to show the world, and ourselves, our finest sporting face, even if the door to the shared bus with the Lebanese delegation is slammed in our face, or when the Saudis refuse to compete with us, or when the Egyptians, who are supposed to have signed a peace agreement with us, refuse to shake our hand.
Was it coincidence that this Egyptian’s name was Islam?
Despite all this rejection, and the inability of the Olympic Organizing Committee to stamp out the unsporting hate that is an anathema of the raison d’etre of the Olympic movement, Israel will continue to show up, strive to do our best and, where possible, to win medals and bring pride to our nation and to the Jewish People.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of the best-selling books, ‘BDS for IDIOTS’ and ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism.’
