After the story, there is another article with an interesting analysis about this racist hatred and the consequences of hate, which ends with some hopeful changes, tiny as they may seem, for the future.
What are your thoughts about this matter? Can you see any relevance in your life, any places where hate and anger has consequences?
Sasson defeated El Shehaby with two throws for an automatic victory, with about a minute and a half remaining in the bout.
Afterwards, El Shehaby lay flat on his back for a moment before standing to take his place before Sasson, in front of the referee. When Sasson extended his hand, El Shehaby backed away, shaking his head.
The referee then called El Shehaby back to the mat and obliged to him bow; El Shehaby gave a quick nod of his head."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/rio-2016/schedules-results/2016/08/12/egypt-israel-judo/88610564/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/sports/olympics/egyptian-refuses-israeli-handshake-or-sasson-islam-shehaby.html?_r=0
Here are some comments from a deeper analysis of this.
"The Meaning of an Olympic Snub
The Arab world has a problem of the mind, and its name is anti-Semitism....
Yet the fact remains that over the past 70 years the Arab world got rid of its Jews, some 900,000 people, while holding on to its hatred of them. Over time the result proved fatal: a combination of lost human capital, ruinously expensive wars, misdirected ideological obsessions, and an intellectual life perverted by conspiracy theory and the perpetual search for scapegoats. The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism.As a historical phenomenon, this is not unique. In a 2005 essay
in Commentary, historian Paul Johnson noted that wherever anti-Semitism took hold, social and political decline almost inevitably followed.....Contrary to myth, the cause was not the creation of the state of Israel. There were bloody anti-Jewish pogroms in Palestine in 1929, Iraq in 1941, and Lebanon in 1945. Nor is it accurate to blame Jerusalem for fueling anti-Semitism by refusing to trade land for peace. Among Egyptians, hatred of Israel barely abated after Menachem Begin relinquished the Sinai to Anwar Sadat. Among Palestinians, anti-Semitism became markedly worse during the years of the Oslo peace process.
In his essay, Mr. Johnson called anti-Semitism a “highly infectious” disease capable of becoming “endemic in certain localities and societies,” and “by no means confined to weak, feeble or commonplace intellects.” Anti-Semitism may be irrational, but its potency, he noted, lies in transforming a personal and instinctive irrationalism into a political and systematic one. For the Jew-hater, every crime has the same culprit and every problem has the same solution.
Anti-Semitism makes the world seem easy. In doing so, it condemns the anti-Semite to a permanent darkness....
The mistreatment and expulsion of Jews has served as a template for the persecution and displacement of other religious minorities: Christians, Yazidis, the Baha’ i.
Hatred of Israel and Jews has also deprived the Arab world of both the resources and the example of its neighbor. Israel quietly supplies water to Jordan, helping to ease the burden of Syrian refugees, and quietly provides surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to Egypt to fight ISIS in the Sinai. But this is largely unknown among Arabs, for whom the only permissible image of Israel is an Israeli soldier in riot gear, abusing a Palestinian.
Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs.
This may be starting to change. In the past five years the Arab world has been forced to face up to its own failings in ways it cannot easily blame on Israel. The change can be seen in the budding rapprochement between Jerusalem and Cairo, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which might yet yield tactical and strategic advantages on both sides, particularly against common enemies such as ISIS and Iran.
So long as an Arab athlete can’t pay his Israeli opposite the courtesy of a handshake, the disease of the Arab mind and the misfortunes of its world will continue. For Israel, this is a pity. For the Arabs, it’s a calamity. The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-meaning-of-an-olympic-snub-1471303698
