Olympic Postscript:Violence comes to Beijing

Just as a PS - it does not involve Israel, but it does set off a sour note.

August 10, 2008
Chinese Man Kills Relative of U.S. Olympic Coach
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — A Chinese man wielding a knife attacked two American tourists related to an American Olympic coach on Saturday, killing one of the tourists and wounding the other and their Chinese tour guide while the three were visiting an ancient tower in central Beijing. The attacker then killed himself by leaping from the tower, Chinese officials said.
The attack came on the first day of the Olympic Games in Beijing, after a dazzling opening ceremony the previous night in which China sought to project an image of power and strength while welcoming thousands of foreign visitors. As news of the killing spread, it cast an instant pall over the city, from the warrens of old alleyways where Chinese are eager to open their arms to foreigners, to the stadiums where visitors waited in line for events like swimming and gymnastics.
The dead American was a man, and the injured American tourist and Chinese guide are both women, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The United State Olympic Committee issued a statement giving broad details of the attack, but did not release the names of the victims. A spokesman for the committee, Darryl Seibel, said the surviving American’s injuries were “serious.”
A spokesman for the American Embassy also declined to give any names on Saturday afternoon, saying the embassy was working with the victims’ families.
The wounded victims were being treated at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, one of Beijing’s best medical centers, located in the Wangfujing shopping district. In the late afternoon, Olympic and Chinese officials and American visitors could be seen walking through the hallways and holding meetings in rooms.
Violence against foreigners is extremely rare in Beijing and throughout China, and all through preparations for the Games, Chinese leaders have taken pains to say that, more than anything else, these Olympics would be safe. The Chinese government has faced enormous challenges this year, notably during the Tibetan riots in March and the deadly earthquake in May, and is determined to show people both here in China and abroad that it can maintain strict control of the country under any circumstances.
The attack took place at noon on the second floor of the ancient Drum Tower, which lies on the north-south axis that runs from the Forbidden City to the main Olympic venue. The tower, a red dynastic-era building that was once used in conjunction with the nearby Bell Tower to signal the time of day, draws for tourists who climb up it for a sweeping view of one of the best preserved ancient neighborhoods in Beijing. The previous night, during the opening ceremony, foreigners and Chinese had mingled in the neighborhood and crowded into bars at nearby Houhai Lake to watch the televised festivities.
Xinhua identified the attacker as Tang Yongming, 47, from the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. The news agency did not provide further details.
Chinese from across the country have made their way to Beijing for the Olympics, but there are also many long-term residents here from Zhejiang, which provides a steady supply of migrant workers for construction projects and other hard-labor jobs.
In recent weeks, the Chinese government has tightened security throughout the capital, reinforcing the usual police units with paramilitary police officers and soldiers. Surveillance cameras have been installed on lampposts, and tens of thousands of residents, most of them elderly, are volunteering as neighborhood sentries. They sit on curbsides and in alleys looking for any suspicious act or person.
Chinese officials had said they their greatest threat of violence came from terrorism, especially from militants seeking an independent state in the western region of Xinjiang.
Chinese generally do not exhibit violent hostilities toward Americans or the United States. During the opening ceremony on Friday night, the American delegation drew thunderous applause when it marched into the Bird’s Nest, from Chinese watching inside and outside the stadium. American sports stars in particular are admired by many Chinese.
The victims were not wearing any clothes that would identify them as American or visitors who had a connection to a U.S. team, Mr. Seibel said.
The volleyball team had been notified soon after the events occurred, and they are staying in the athletes’ village, he said. He did not know whether they would still compete in a match scheduled for Sunday.
President Bush and Laura Bush were both still in Beijing on Saturday. Ms. Bush toured the Forbidden City in the morning, and Mr. Bush had plans to watch a women’s volleyball match.
“Laura and I were also saddened by the attack on an American family and their Chinese tour guide today in Beijing,” Mr. Bush said in his hotel after making a brief statement about the fighting in Georgia. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. And the United States government has offered to provide any assistance the family needs.”
Spectators at Olympic venues began hearing about the attack shortly after it took place.
“To tell you the truth, this is really a shock because there’s so much security here,” said Annette Busateri, 31, a communications manager from Salt Lake City who was watching men’s gymnastics qualifications when she heard the news. “We were told that even at the public markets, there was a lot of security in plainclothes. There are guards everywhere and cameras. So I’m not sure how something like this could happen.”
She and her husband, Kirt Busateri, were traveling around China with a tour group, and they both said they would not be nervous on the tour. But when asked if they would still wear clothes with “U.S.A.” on them, they paused.
“I would, I think, because there is still national pride there,” Annette Busateri said. “You can’t let something like this change the way you live or make you shy away from being American.”
Tina Jacobson, 55, of Atlanta, was wearing a shirt with the American flag on it as she waited with her 19-year-old daughter Jackie to get into the fencing venue. They were in Beijing to cheer on Ms. Jacobson’s other daughter, Sada, who is competing in the women’s saber final Saturday night.
“I feel safe; we do a lot of traveling,” Tina Jacobson said. “This is a very big city and there are people who do bad things.”
Jackie said, “There are crazy people on every corner on the globe.”
A number of Americans interviewed in and around the Olympic venues all said they have been made to feel welcome by the Chinese.
In the afternoon, the Drum Tower itself remained sealed off by the police, but people were allowed to walk around the area and cars drove past on a wide street that runs along the tower’s south side. People interviewed in the area said they were shocked by the attack, and no one admitted to seeing or hearing anything earlier.
Facing the Drum Tower on its north side is the gray stone edifice of the Bell Tower. Both rise from a sea of ancient alleyways, called hutongs, that give much of Beijing its character. Few sights in the capital are more evocative than a glimpse of one of the towers from those alleys or from the shore of Houhai Lake. The terrace of the Drum Tower has a stunning view of the tiled rooftops of old courtyard homes nestled within the hutongs, and it is this panorama that would have drawn the two American tourists and their guide up into the tower on Saturday.
Though rare, violence has marred several Olympic Games. The deadliest incident took place during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by a Palestinian group calling itself Black September.
At the 1996 Atlanta Games, a pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Park, killing one woman who had traveled to the Olympics with her daughter and injuring more than 100 others. A Turkish cameraman died of a heart attack while responding to the blast.
In 2005, Eric Robert Rudolph, who had been a fugitive in the North Carolina wilderness for five years, pleaded guilty to the Atlanta bombing and three others, claiming they were motivated, in part, by his opposition to legalized abortion.
Murders of foreigners in China are almost as rare. The latest reported incident occurred last month in Shanghai, where a 23-year-old Canadian model, Diana O’Brien, was stabbed to death in an apartment complex. Chinese officials later said the police had arrested a young Chinese man who confessed to killing Ms. O’Brien during a botched robbery.
In 2006, an Italian woman, Sandri Paola, was stabbed to death on a street south of Chaoyang Park, in eastern Beijing. Ms. Paola had been in China more than a month on that trip, during which she was teaching Chinese at a French university. She had worked in the Italian embassy’s cultural department in 2004.
Katie Thomas, Juliet Macur, Jere Longman, Steven Lee Myers and Jake Hooker contributed reporting, and Zhang Jing and Tang Xuemei contributed research.

Boycotting Olympics

Yes, the opening ceremonies had all the bells and whistles one could ask for. While it was a great show, one can't help but think of the indignities suffered to bring about this spectacular. It might only be a small blip in the back of the mind, but how can you overlook people being displaced to make way for a Disney World show? This in additon to China's human rights record will be a shadow over 2008 Olympics.


The Last Word: Israel should boycott the Olympics opening ceremony

Aug. 8, 2008Jeremy Last , THE JERUSALEM POST

At 8 p.m. on Friday, Beijing time, President Shimon Peres will settle into his seat along with dozens of other world leaders, ready to witness the opening ceremony of the 2008 summer Olympic Games.
As the event gets into gear, athletes representing each of the 200-plus countries competing at the Games will file into the newly built 91,000-seat stadium, affectionately known as the Bird's Nest.
Israeli fans around the world will be waiting with anticipation and pride for Team Israel to enter the arena. It will be a moment of joy, when the preparation for the Games finally ends and the Israeli sportsmen, led by veteran kayaker Michael Kolganov, walk around the stadium's running track.
But while there will be a sense of happiness and accomplishment for most of those involved, even before a ball has been struck or a judo bout fought, there will also be a feeling that all this is just not right.
The decision by the International Olympic Committee to award the Games to Beijing has been widely criticized, in the most part due to China's poor human rights record and its obscene pollution problems, especially in Beijing itself.
Those who have spoken out and continue to speak out against the Chinese and the IOC for its decision believe it was a big mistake to reward the communist one-party state with the privilege of hosting the Olympics.
And they are correct.
The Games should never have been given to China, even if the government promised to use the opportunity to improve its human rights record.
Seven years down the line, according to many human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International, little has been done to change the situation.
The fact is, China is a country with no real democracy, which enforces the will of the ruling leadership on a practically helpless public.
The stories of the hundreds of Beijing residents who were forced to move out of their homes to make way for the construction of the various stadia and arenas for the Olympics send a chill down one's spine. That some of these residents were imprisoned for up to five years after they tried to protest the forced moves is even scarier.
Israel is a state that rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a country which should always make concern for human rights a top priority. As such the Israeli leadership should make its voice heard on this issue.
Unfortunately, the Games will go ahead in China, protests or no protests. There was little chance the IOC would reverse its decision, despite the chilling tales of the violence against pro-Tibet protesters earlier this year.
The issue of pollution and the way the Chinese tried to cover it up by closing numerous factories just for the duration of the Games is also extremely problematic.
The People's Republic should have been pressed to deal with the problem at its core many years ago rather than just trying to curtain it off for a few weeks and allowing it to return once the Games are over.
For the vast majority of athletes, including the 43 Israelis competing, the Olympic Games are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove themselves on the greatest sporting stage in the world.
Therefore, to boycott the entire 16-day event would be going too far and would punish the hopeful sportsmen for the crimes of others.
In fact we at The Jerusalem Post have no qualms covering the Games and are proud to have our own reporter, Allon Sinai, in Beijing to report on the events as they unfold.
However, Israel should make a stand.
Boycotting the opening ceremony would send a message to the world that Israel does not accept that China was the correct country to host the Games.
If the Israeli team were absent from the opening ceremony, questions would be asked and the stand would be taken.
Peres will be in the country for four days, and his schedule includes meetings with local media and leaders as well as attending a reception hosted by Hu Jintao, the president of the People's Republic of China.
It is unlikely Peres will use this chance to press Jintao on the problems of human rights violations in China, but if he and the team boycotted the opening ceremony, at least the issue would be forced onto the table.

Fair Play for Israel at the United Nations

In the process of researching a final term paper on the establishment of Israel and the United Nations, I was taken aback how the United Nations, a international institution, created to uphold the rights of all, has become a vehicle for an anti- Israeli agenda. Anti -Semitic rhetoric is alive and well at the U.N.

There is a petition online, urging the United Nations to reconsider its current philosophy and do away with committees that support an anti-Israeli and anti -Semitic mindset.

http://www.zionism-israel.com/issues/UNPetition.htm

Whether or not one decides to sign this petition, I think it is important to read this web page to understand how the Israelis have been forced to sit on the sidelines while others condemn or decide their fate. There must be a dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, but it must be an objective dialogue, not colored by the agendas of either side.

The United Nations must somehow rid itself of personal agendas if it is to be an international objective body ready to protect the rights of all its members.

Remember the names!

In the following excerpt from the NY Times it states that very few Israelis recognize the names of the athletes going Beijing:

August 3, 2008,

The Olympics Overseas: In Israel, the Team Nobody Knows
By The New York Times
We have asked correspondents and reporters from the Times’s overseas bureaus to tell us how the Olympics are being perceived in various countries around the world. Below, a dispatch from Isabel Kershner in the Jerusalem bureau.
JERUSALEM — Israel was scheduled to send 43 athletes to compete in the 2008 Olympics. But in the days before the start of the Games, most Israelis could not name a single one of them.
A poll published in late July indicated that 76 percent of Israelis could not come up with the name of any Israeli competitor; 96 percent could not name any one of the new immigrants who make up a third of the athletes and almost half of the trainers going to Beijing.
Israeli Olympic pole vaulter Alex Averbukh. (AFP/Don Emmert)
The poll was commissioned by the country’s Absorption Ministry, which has mounted a campaign under the slogan “Together, we achieve more,” to coincide with the Olympics. The idea is to promote the contribution made to Israel by the new immigrant athletes, most of whom hail from the former Soviet Union, and to ease immigrant integration in general.
Clearly, there’s a ways to go.
One of the stars of the campaign, Aleksandr Averbukh, 33, is billed on Ynet, the Web site of the most popular Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, as “Israel’s best athlete ever.” A pole vault champion who was born in Russia and became an Israeli citizen in 1999, Mr. Averbukh reached the pole vault finals at the Olympics in Sydney and Athens in 2000 and 2004 and won the European championship in 2002 and 2006.

It would be great to have the world see Israel in a positive light - perhaps participation on the world athletic stage will do that - we can then remember Israeli athletes for their accomplishments rather than mourn their loss as we did after Munich.

Israel's 2008 Olympic Team: Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or
Aug. 3, 2008Allon Sinai , THE JERUSALEM POST
To say Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or booked his place at the Beijing Games at the last moment is an understatement. Shapira was added to the Israeli delegation on Thursday, just eight days before the start of the Olympics.
The 19-year-old had initially fallen four hundredths of a second short of the criteria time in the 200 meter freestyle and it seemed he would have to wait four years to make his Olympic debut in London.
The High Court of the Olympic Committee of Israel decided, however, that Bar-Or's national record of 1:48.76 minutes, which he set in Croatia two weeks ago, is good enough as he never had the chance to request to be selected as one of the three youngsters in the delegation because the now suspended Max Jaben had initially been Israel's representative to the Games in the 200m free.
Bar-Or has long been regarded as the future of Israeli swimming and the Beijing Games should be the first of many Olympics for him. A place in the Olympic semis is, nevertheless, within his reach next week, assuming of course he sets a new national record.