I will continue with the Olympic Games for another day, and begin with the Mexico City Games of 1968. I went with my life-long friend, Elie, after we reserved rooms at the hotel and purchased tickets for the events we wished to attend. We were also passing along greetings from a friend in Beit Mery to his relatives in Mexico City. We telephoned the relatives from the hotel and not a half hour later, a delegation showed up. Tawfiq Yuma (changed from Joumaa in Arabic) insisted that we spend the period of the Games as guests of his family in their house. He asked his son-in-law, Alejandro (from Iskander in Arabic) to leave work during the Games and devote himself to accompanying us to the Olympic stadium every day. It was a case of being received as a guest in the old-fashioned way, which does not exist anymore. I was left with the impression that I would never see a more important Olympic Games, for three reasons. One, I entered the Olympic stadium with Elie and Alejandro one day and were surprised to find the spectators, mostly Americans, chanting abuse and shouting. There were two black runners on the podium, each raising an arm with a clenched fist, which we did not understand at the time. John Carlos and Tommy Smith were giving the Black Power salute, as part of the civil rights movement in the United States. Two, we were near the long jump event and a Black American athlete approached, awaiting his turn. I spoke to him and Elie, and he told us that he was hoping to jump before it rained. We all began to feel a few drops on our heads. It was Bob Beamon, who a few minutes later jumped 8.9 meters and broke the world record by about half a meter, even though most such records are broken by a few split seconds or fractions of meters. Beamon's record stood for 23 years and I remember that a side of Time magazine's front cover read "Beamon's jump." Third, there was the American Dick Fosbury, who opted to clear the bar in the high jump by going over with his back rather than his stomach, which was the custom at the time. The spectators laughed, but not when he won the gold medal, with a record of 2.24 meters. The "Fosbury flop" was then born. I returned to Beirut with unforgettable memories, which made me determined to attend the next Games, in Munich in 1972. I had become the editor of The Daily Star and received an invitation from the West German government. I went in style, choosing either to attend or not attend certain events, while I also had an official bodyguard. I have written about the attack by Palestinian gunmen on the Israeli team on other occasions. The bodyguards took me in their car to the Olympic Village so that I could follow the developments myself. I do not want to return to a topic I have written about for four newspapers I have edited. Today, I will say only that I condemn the attack and I also condemn Israel and its supporters, as well as the attempt to exploit the incident in every version of the Games ever since. References to the "Olympic massacre" are a mistake. The Palestinian gunmen did not want to kill anyone; they wanted to kidnap Israeli athletes to trade them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It was certainly a kidnapping, and the people who were killed were athletes and kidnappers, after the German police ambushed the Palestinians and hostages at the airport from which they were supposed to go to Algeria. Once again, the Palestinian gunmen, whose act I also condemn, once again, did not try to kill the hostages, and this was not their objective. They were all victims of a failed ambush at the airport, not the Olympic Village. Israel, and some of its supporters in the well-known mafia, wanted the London Games to salute the memory of the Israeli athletes, but this was rejected by the organizers, who replaced it with something silly in the Olympic Village. I propose that the Games salute the memory of 10,000 prisoners and detainees in the prisons of the criminal state, Israel, especially since they include women and minors. That attack took me back to work, gathering details. I wrote and then read them over the phone to colleagues at The Daily Star and the old Al-Hayat in Beirut. One result of the work was that I missed attending the historic basketball game between the United States and the Soviet Union. The game ended with a victory by the Americans, as all of the spectators believed, but the referee insisted on adding three seconds, which was enough for the USSR to win and take the gold, as the US lost for the first time. The silver medal is still in a Swiss bank because the Americans refused to accept it, in protest at the three extra seconds and the result. To be continued tomorrow. [email protected]
