Opinion
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Greenberg's View
Editorial
Olympic Turn-Off
T
he Summer Olympics start this
weekend in Beijing, and the
world again finds its premier
athletic competition under the auspices of
a dangerous government.
It also happened in 1936 in Berlin and
in 1980 in Moscow.
Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympics as
a showpiece for the Third Reich. Thanks
to Jesse Owens and others, Hitler missed
his grand athletic triumph, but he won the
propaganda war. Visitors saw what Hitler
wanted them to see and spread the lies
he wanted the world to believe. President
Franklin Roosevelt, for example, learned
from American travelers that German Jews
were safe.
When the Soviet Union played host 44
years later, the world refused to play the
propaganda game. Outraged by the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, the United States
stayed away. That deprived the Soviets
of the chance to sell the false image of a
nation of contented, well-treated people.
Now the Olympics are returning to an
oppressive Communist nation. Like the
Nazis, the Chinese government crushes
dissenters and minorities, especially
Tibetans; like the Soviets, the Chinese have
their hands in foreign messes, particularly
Sudan, where China has protected
the government during its genocide
in Darfur.
We're glad no nations are boycot-
ting the Chinese games. The lesson
of 1980 is that national Olympic
boycotts don't force oppressive host
countries to abandon their blood-
thirsty ways. The Soviets did not
change their policy in Afghanistan;
they just boycotted the Los Angeles
Olympics four years later.
The question is what we can learn
from 1936.
Nearly 200 rabbis and other Jewish
communal leaders this spring called for
individuals to skip the Olympics in sup-
port of Darfur, Tibet and Chinese human
rights.
"We remember all too well that the road
to Nazi genocide began in the 1930s with
Hitler's efforts to improve the public image
of his evil regime their letter read.
Among others, including the Orthodox
Union and the American Jewish
Committee, the Anti-Defamation League
rejected that comparison: "One simply
cannot equate the Beijing Olympics with
those games in Nazi Germany on the eve
of the Holocaust"
The world's leaders, including President
Bush, are attending the opening ceremo-
nies in Beijing, refusing to endanger busi-
ness with a market of 1.2 billion people.
Similarly, Jewish groups feared that a
Jewish-led boycott would cost Israel valu-
able Chinese contracts.
We wish Bush and others had stayed
home to draw attention to China as a glob-
al outcast instead of a. great host. Such a
demonstration would not have freed Tibet
or protected Darfur, any more than the
1980 boycott helped Afghanistan, but it
would have denied China the kind of pro-
paganda victory Hitler claimed in 1936.
Instead, it's up to each of us to make
a small statement that we see China for
what it is — a threat to human rights and
liberty.
NBC says it will offer more than 1,400
hours of TV coverage and more than 2,200
hours of Webcasts (www.nbcolympics.
com ) of the Olympics. For each hour of
the Olympics you view, we urge that you
invest a notable amount of time going to
www.savedarfur.org or www.freetibetorg
and educate yourself on how you, through
the various support and relief organiza-
tions, can help those oppressed people.
Beijing in 2008 is not Berlin in 1936, but
that doesn't mean Darfur or Tibet can't
become Poland during the height of the
Holocaust. Any little reminder to China
that we will hold it accountable is more
than the world did for the Jews 72 years
ago.
When he lost the
Democratic primary,
Lieberman refused to be a
good boy and toddle off into
obscurity. He ran as an inde-
pendent, instead, and won
the general election handily.
While still caucusing with the
Democrats, he has become
a staunch supporter of his
longtime friend, Republican
presidential candidate Sen.
John McCain.
This has made Lieberman, who is
one Israel's most forceful advocates in
American politics, a target of the left's full
fury. It is no coincidence that the guiding
force behind MoveOn.org , Eli Pariser, is
one of the leading figures in J Street.
This group is fully aware that Obama
has problems among American Jews,
many of whom do not trust his grasp of
the Mideast's political nuances and his
policies towards Israel. So it goes after
Lieberman.
J Street clings to the illusion that if you
just sit down and talk to those naughty
boys at Hamas and Hezbollah, they will
see reason. It is a view shared by the edi-
torial pages of the New York Times, the
Detroit Free Press and the small group of
writers and intellectuals (and why do I feel
I should put quotation marks around that
last word) who make up J Street.
I get the uneasy feeling that this also is
the worldview from which Obama comes,
a dedicated belief that Israelis the heavy
in the scenario.
AIPAC is not perfect. I do not agree with
its support for West Bank settlements,
which seem to be a major exercise in
illogic. Joe Lieberman is not without flaws,
either.
But, I keep asking myself, as compared
to what? ❑
❑
Reality Check
Crossing The Street
A
ccording to a news release
put out by J Street last month,
Democratic presidential candi-
date Sen. Barack Obama is "far more pop-
ular among Jews" than Sen. Joe Lieberman
of Connecticut.
If the results of the survey can be
trusted, and the methodology is a bit
murky, that's a pretty sad commentary on
the current state of what passes for Jewish
liberalism. But there is a clear agenda at
work here.
J Street is a fairly new organization.
Its name was chosen because, just as
there is no J among the lettered streets
of Washington, D.C., this organization
purports to fill a missing need in Jewish
political life.
It insists that AIPAC (American Israel
Public Affairs Committee) does not reflect
the feelings of a large number of American
Jews on policy towards Israel. In its view,
AIPAC is far too conservative.
Sure it is. If AIPAC is conservative, then
I'm Napoleon.
Survey after survey indicate
that the overwhelming majority
of American Jews, somewhere in
the 80 percentile range, support
its tough policies toward Hamas
and other enemies of Israel.
So when J Street seeks to deni-
grate Lieberman, its real target
is AIPAC.
Lieberman, after all, was an
exemplary liberal for his entire
public career — except for his
support of the Iraq War. With the
shift of a few hundred votes in the 2000
presidential election, it may well have been
he and not Obama who won the nomina-
tion this year.
On the basis of his Iraq stance alone,
however, several organizations on the
far left, most prominently MoveOn.
org , decided to finance his opponent in
Connecticut's 2006 Democratic primary.
It was a race distinguished by scurrilous
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel postings on
many Web sites opposed to Lieberman.
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aoLcom.
August 7 • 2008
A25