Hate is hate, regardless of its target
The Olympic Games are over and hypocrisy has taken full control. It is almost unimaginable but Lebanese athletes would not ride on a bus with Israeli athletes. A Saudi Arabian forfeits a contest so that he does not have to wrestle an Israeli. An Egyptian refuses to shake hands with an Israeli after being beaten in a contest. The beat goes on and there will be many more slights and insults of this nature. The International Olympic Committee warned Lebanon that its behavior was inappropriate, but of course nothing was done about it.
This was the first year since 1972 that any honor was bestowed upon the memory of the Israeli Olympians who were murdered at the Munich Olympics. The mastermind of that homicidal attack was none other than Yasser Arafat, the leader of Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank of the Jordan River who purported to seek the establishment of a Palestinian State alongside Israel.
Can anyone imagine the response of the United States if a competitor refused to shake the hands of Michael Phelps or to get on the bus with an American team? We would all be apoplectic. It would be sportsmanship unbecoming any individual or nation.
The International Olympic Committee must do more than make disapproving comments. Teams whose athletes refused to compete based upon race, religion or nationality or mistreat other athletes should be banned from the games. If we are willing to bar people for blood doping, we ought to impose standards on unsportsmanlike behavior.
We live in a world that regularly tolerates antisemitism, while decrying other forms of bigotry. Racism against the Jewish people and Israel is often excused as being political speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hate is hate, regardless of who the target is.
When the Black Lives Matter Movement goes to Israel and extols the position of Arab community which teaches hatred against Judaism, that is racism. Black Lives Matter is increasingly an important international movement. Yet, has the group gone to Sudan where black Africans are being ethnically cleansed by hordes of Arab murderers?
It is absolutely true when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu states on the video that Israel has done more for the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank than their own governments have done. Israel supplied the 800,000 tons of concrete for building in Gaza that was used to build terror attack tunnels! More Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals during the insane civil war there than have been treated in other Arab countries, except to the extent those countries were forced to accept refugees.
Israeli doctors and teams of lifesavers have appeared around the world wherever there are natural disasters. There is an entire community in the Philippines where many children are named “Israel” because of the assistance provided by Israel after a devastating natural disaster. Whether it is a tsunami, a hurricane, disaster in Haiti, the Philippines or AIDS in Africa, Israel is there to help notwithstanding its small size and tiny budget compared to the rest of the world. The 22 Arab nations? They are nowhere except making trouble for one another, the rest of the world and the Jewish people.
It is time that we stood up and faced the hypocrisy of those who would boycott, divest and sanction Israel while not merely permitting but even encouraging every form of terrorism around the world. China occupies Tibet. Half of Africa has invaded the other half; the United States occupies Guam, Puerto Rico and many other colonies such as the District of Columbia which are taxed but do not have the full rights of U.S. citizens. Where are the political activists seeking the boycott, divestiture or sanction of any of those nations who imposed there will upon others that crushed legitimate nationalist movements?
The Olympics are just another venue where Jewish people and Israelis must face the most degrading, humiliating and unfair form of conduct. Athletes and the nations, who promote those competitors, need to be seriously sanctioned when they do the wrong thing and mistreat others. Whether it is the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972 or whether it is the almost daily affronts at the Olympic Games, the world should not stand silent.
While heaps of unfair critical resolutions are dumped upon Israel at the U.N., the worst terrorist promoters in the world face no sanction whatsoever. Even the United States has stood by for well over 30 years while the Kurds have been slaughtered in the Middle East. Our economic relations with Turkey, Iran, Syria and other despotic regimes prevented us from recognizing the legitimate nationalist rights of the Kurdish people. Not that any of this will matter of course. We will continue to watch the Olympic Games and we will turn our heads from the inevitable snubs and insults of those who live every day of their lives in complete and total hypocrisy. The question is whether the United States, which supports those games directly and indirectly, will stand up and say that Israeli athletes and Jews should not be treated in a degrading and racist way? Will our president speak up on that? Will our Congress act to utilize its economic power with the International Olympic Committee to end racism at the Olympic Games once and for all?