Few days after the Lebanese Olympic team refused to ride on a bus with Israeli athletes travelling to the Games’ opening ceremony in Rio, the International Olympic Committee reprimanded the head of the Lebanese delegation on Sunday and warned Lebanese delegation head Salim al-Haj Nakoula that they would not accept any other situations like the one according to [Haaretz] and [Jpost].
I couldn’t find any official link to the Olympic Committee’s response but I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened. Nevertheless, if that’s the case, they can take this warning and shove it up their asses. It is the organizing committee’s job to make sure such incidents don’t take place in the first place and keep Lebanon & Israel apart. The Lebanese Delegation has every right to block the Israelis because they will end up in trouble back home if they don’t, and the organizing committee as well as the Olympic committee for the Rio 2016 should have made sure these teams don’t meet.
Some people will tell me that these are just sports and that we should be competing against Israelis instead of boycotting them. I partially agree but until the Lebanese authorities decide to do so, don’t expect our athletes to go hug Israeli athletes because that’s the Olympic spirit. They’d end up in jail or even worse might not be allowed to come back home.
On another note, it’s pretty funny to hear an Israeli minister describe the Lebanese act as being “antisemitism pure and simple, and the worst kind of racism”. I recommend he reads more about the Israeli Apartheid to understand what racism truly means.
You know what, let us the successful republic of Lebanon have our own olympics. Since we are very successful in managing our country from the head of the state which is the president to the smallest garbage bag which we can’t even find a place to throw it.
We play sports, means we should have a certain mentality and personality that goes side by side with being opened and friendly to any opponent. If you have a problem with Israel the. Don’t participate in any sports.
I don’t think the whole fuckin world needs to change the laws just for few people who cant manage anything.
Seriously guys.
How do you think other nationalities look at us when we do that?
We are nothing but dirty filthy barbarians. With all my respect to the Lebanese community but it’s time to grow up and build a state before we get lost in stupid details that didn’t help I. The past and as u can see won’t help I. The future.
And why do they need to shove it up their ass? Why don’t we shove it up our asses and don’t participate in something if we are not gonna be treating and being treated like every single participating nationality ????
It’s time to wake up
If we have issues in our country, we are not the only ones. We are surrounded by war zones. If we have so many issues in the Middle East it’s because of the unjust and illegal creation of Israel who killed many Lebanese. If our athletes are proud of the country and abide by the law, that’s good.
It is ni secret that the two countries are at war and ennemies so it is the failing of the organizing committee and not the Lebanese team.
So why don’t we respect the few who respect the law abd defend their rights to be treated with integrity?
Wishing our athletes all the best and asking them to request preventive measures to protect their rights in fair treatment in the Olympic games that is consistent with the status of their country.
Good luck Champs
Keep your heads high
Your country needs you to play well
We need something to cheer about
We love you back and wish you a safe return home!
Gina Chammas
Exactly my thoughts, they can shove it up their asses.
Few words to the previous commentator:
– You don’t get the whole world to like you in life, deal with it. Especially a world that is so ignorant today despite the flow of information; one newspaper sends out the news from a bias point of view and you can count on your hand the number of people who challenged the approach. People are growing dumb and you obviously are part of the same group. This is one situation where you can give a rat’s ass whether the world likes you or not.
– The 2 countries are at war so the organizers should have avoided this mess.
Would they have not made everything they can to make sure they don’t end up with the Palestinian team on the bus?
– They (the Israelis) know very well that we are officially at war; if you read, you would be aware that they call Lebanon officially an enemy state.
– As an enemy state, interaction with the other party is not allowed by the law. They know it and yet, they made an entire campaign out of this incident, colored it as anti-semitic to get the world to view them as victims (it historically worked for them) and us negatively. Because they were kicked out of a bus. They can kill and destroy others but they can’t get over the fact that they were forced to hop onto another bus. I admire one thing about Israelis: they are patriotic. They side with their country/citizens regardless of the stakes. Unlike people like you who drop their country/citizens at the first ‘unlikeable’ and in your view embarrassing behavior.
So Patriotic that you won’t find among them someone like Fred Maroun (and I’m trying my best not to add an adjective next to his name), a Lebanese Canadian who lives out of Lebanon and is obviously out of touch with how the mainstream Lebanese would view the situation, who found it very suitable to open his mouth and publicly declare he is on the side of the Israelis on this one. And they have been retweeting his article for days now and parading it in our faces. While I do understand that not everyone has the balls to take a stand, I do have some expectations that some would have the decency to keep their mouth shut publicly, because … you know that thing called pride.
– It’s not about just the past. They are eager to destroy your country again which you would be aware of if you read (again). It’s not a secret, it’s even in their newspapers (namely the Jerusalem Post), you just need to google ‘israelis plans to invade’ again.
I am not against peace talks in the future but such peace talks need to happen placing both countries interests on the table; any future relationship needs to have respect and acceptance of the rights of the other party. Right now, the Israelis want peace with you on uneven grounds and push for people like you to take it. They are already tipping the scale to their side with the financial and military support they get. But it does not mean that we have to go down on our knees if we want peace just for the sake of being ‘liked’ or ‘thought of favourably by the world’. We licked asses of foreign interventions for decades and it did not do us any good. Let’s be patriotic for a change and enter negotiations proudly and this frame of mind of pride starts with you standing up for your country publicly whether you agree with some actions or not (you’ll never agree on everything) and if you can’t, just shut the fuck up (you didn’t see that coming, did you?) (I don’t mean it to you as only you but to every Leb out there who feels wrongfully slighted by the fact that the Israelis were kicked out of a bus).
Yeah, because we don’t have other issues to deal with.