The Olympic Flame Scam: a Wonderful Idea From Dr. Goebbels!

BY GIORGOS MITRALIAS

 APRIL 26, 2024
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Overflowing with national pride, the Greek media, seconded by the country’s grandiloquent authorities, don’t miss the opportunity to present this veritable re-enactment of a Nazi ceremony, namely the so-called “Olympic flame lighting ceremony” in Olympia… as proof of the greatness and historical continuity of the Greek nation. And with it, to present its accessories too, such as “the first Olympic torch” which, as we read, was handed over to the mayor of Marathon, “in a magnificent ceremony that included a symbolic torch run from the Marathon Historic Start Line to the Marathon Run Museum”.

Significant detail, which is of course systematically passed over in silence, as it is considered… “a national secret”: this “first torch”, inspired by Goebbels and manufactured by Krupp, was lit in Olympia with a choreography, which remains the same to this day, by Hitler’s official director, the infamous Leni Riefenstahl. It has to be said that this “first torch” fell on hard times in 1936, when Czech citizens stoned the German-speaking torchbearers as they passed through their country, because it was obvious that the route they were following marked the contours of the great Third Reich, which was to become a nightmarish reality four years later. Apparently, these Czech citizens of 1936 knew in advance what the Greek media and the authorities of our poor country still persist in ignoring… in 2024. So here’s why we’ve been looking forward for decades to the moment when this flame is irrevocably extinguished: simply because “the Olympic flame” is “a wonderful idea of Dr. Goebbels”, as the full-page headline of the Greek daily Estia aptly stated in August 1936…

So, what ancient ancestors, virgin priestesses, sacred flames and other tall tales are we talking about? All this nonsense that the entire Greek state and its political staff, including 9 out of 10 of its official intellectuals, have taught us to believe comes straight from the depths of the ages, is only celebrating its… 88th birthday! At the end of July 1936, shortly before the opening of the Olympic Games of triumphant Nazism in Berlin, Greek newspapers carried articles with the usual patriotic and epico-lyrical accents, celebrating Leni Riefenstahl and her “Olympic flame lighting ceremony”, of which here are a few edifying extracts:

“When Olympia awoke, when the sun rose behind the conical, green Mount Cronion and silvered the waters of the Kladeos and the Alpheus, the people who suffered under the scorching sun of the historic July 20, 1936, each took their place: some under the pines of the Cronion, others around the gates of the Place Coubertin. And they waited all night until the moment when, from the Cronion hill, the signal was given for the ceremony to begin. Further on, in the morning, a wonderful woman – Leni Riefenstahl – had brought her film crew and, at the starting line of the ancient stadium, staged the lighting of the Olympic flame herself. Then, at the Temple of Hera, she demonstrated her genius as a director. She took Pratsika and her schoolgirls, immediately she made an actor out of her cameraman- for Condylis, the first runner, had no intention of wearing the tight underpants worn by the ancients; she stripped him down, made him a runner, lit dried herbs from the sacred Altis on the makeshift altar formed by the drums of the columns, adjusted the engines and shot the film, giving advice, orders and instructions. Ten times she shot the same thing, the start with the torch of the first runner. The German was literally roasted, sweat oozing like a river. Riefenstahl threw him a towel to dry himself off and started shooting again”.

(…) As this takes place on Place Coubertin, at the starting line of the ancient stadium, a beautiful ritual unfolds. Pratsika’s light-bearing virgins take in the Olympic light from the sun. They are all alone. No one is allowed to witness the lighting. And in fact, at this ceremony, which Leni Riefenstahl had filmed in the morning during rehearsals, no one was to be present – only Phoebus and the Greek virgins, the fire-givers, were supposed to witness the divine ceremony.

(…) It’s the most moving moment. Everyone looks on in silent admiration and respect. The Olympic light will be transmitted. Young Condylis, from Olympia, crosses the girls of light and lights the torch from the altar fire. This is the moment everyone has been waiting for. It’s impossible that everyone’s bodies haven’t stood still, that their breath hasn’t stopped for a moment, that their mouths haven’t gone numb. The sun, a blazing silver sun, bathed the whole idyllic green land of Olympia. Young Condylis, half-naked, sunburned, has just lit the first torch, and is running… running, holding it aloft. The crowd erupts in applause and bravos.

In an instant, he rounds the Cronion ring road and is off, running with the sacred flame of Olympia to transmit the Olympic light – the eternal Greek civilization of feat and spirit”(1).

(VRADYNI newspaper, Tuesday, July 21, 1936)

As we would say today, a Hollywood spectacle staged by the Nazi party’s official ceremonial director, Leni Riefenstahl, based on an idea by Dr. Goebbels, heartily approved by Chancellor Hitler!

Let’s suppose you are right, might -finally- exclaim the Greek officials of all kinds who keep their mouths shut and feign ignorance. And of course, they’ll counter-attack: but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all Olympism is rotten, that Baron de Coubertin’s Olympic idea is no longer valid, and that it shouldn’t inspire us.

So let’s talk about the “father” of Olympism, the inspirer and founder of the modern Olympic Games, de Coubertin, whose name adorns streets and squares all over the world and especially in our country, Greece. We’ll say it straight out: Our good Baron was a rare racist, militaristic, reactionary, colonialist, misogynistic and warmongering individual of the extreme right (with obvious Nazi sympathies) before whom a Donald Trump or his compatriot Marine Le Pen pale in comparison! And here’s a small anthology of his “credos” formulated by the Baron himself, who throughout his life never ceased to declare himself – and to be – a “fanatical colonialist” and a supporter of all inequalities (of class, race and gender):

Drawing by Sonia Mitralia.

+ “the races are not of equal value and all others must pledge allegiance to the white race, which is inherently superior”

+ “There are two distinct races: the honest ones, with their strong muscles and confident gait, and the sickly ones, with their humble, desperate looks and defeated gaze. So, in colleges as in the world: the weak are sidelined; this education can only be appreciated by the strong.”

+ “Don’t let anyone talk to us about games in which women, teenagers – in short, the weak – can take part.”

+ “The only true Olympic hero is the male individual. Female Olympiads are unthinkable. They would be uninteresting, unattractive and untrue. At the Olympic Games, their role should above all consist, as in the ancient knights’ tournaments, in crowning the winners.”

+ “The superior race has every right to deny the inferior race certain privileges of civilized life”.

+  “The young athlete certainly feels better prepared than his ancestors to go to war. And when we are prepared for something, we do it more willingly.”

+ “I would like to thank the German government and people for the efforts they have made in honor of the eleventh Olympiad” (…)”. How could I renounce the celebration of the Eleventh Olympiad, since (…) this apotheosis of the Nazi regime was the emotional shock that allowed the Olympic Games to develop?”

So it was only natural that, shortly afterwards, Chancellor Hitler should nominate de Coubertin for… the Nobel Peace Prize!

Epilogue: All this is now common knowledge, and we have no illusions that historical or other arguments will “convince” the powers that be to put an end to what is the greatest swindle of the last two centuries. If anything can put an end to this improbable – yet true – “Olympic” mix of Nazi and commercial circus of corruption and alienation, it’s the movement of citizens in flesh and blood alone. After all, nothing is built on lies and fraud…

Note

1. See extracts from the film shot by Riefenstall on this occasion in Olympia in 1936:

Liz Truss and the West: A Failed Former Prime Minister Speaks

by Binoy Kampmark / April 26th, 2024

It is unfortunate that column space should be dedicated to Britain’s shortest termed prime minister and, arguably, one of its most imbecilic and cringingly juvenile.  But given that some people still sympathise with her and her views, it falls to one to tackle her latest work which resembles other types of the gloomy genre warning that action, if not taken now, will result in civilisational catastrophe.

From the outset, the premise of Ten Years to Save the West is confused.  She declares the work is not a political memoir so much as “a call to action for fellow conservatives who believe in our nation and our way of life and who share my frustration at what has been going wrong with our politics and governance.”  But the aggrieved memoirist, rather than a sound political thinker, dominates the narrative.

In Ten Years to Save the West, Truss gives us what The Daily Telegraph describes as a “romp”.  Certainly, it is not like other prime ministerial accounts more likely to induce a mild coma or soporific escape.  She did have a mere 49 turbulent days in Number 10, a time so short it did not enable her to move in her furniture.  During that spell, she managed to tank the British economy and cripple the Tory party.  In a span of just over a month, her policies pushed 13% of Tory voters towards Labor.

Truss never tires of telling us that everything was stacked against her.  In all the ministerial positions she occupied in government, she claims to have been a radical stymied by a host of forces.  She faced opposition in the education portfolio.  As environmental secretary, she battle Tory colleagues afflicted with “climate fever” while fighting off the Marxist climate lobby.  She might have secured a UK-US Free Trade Agreement with the Trump administration were it not for her wretched colleagues.

Whatever undercooked notions she had – a loose collection of economic musings that came to be called Trussonomics – she laments the “sheer power of the administrative state and its influence on the markets and the wider polity”.  But she has the order the wrong way around.  The very markets that she sees as the state’s salvation – at least in terms those operating in them – had no confidence in her.  It was her Tory idol, Margaret Thatcher, who endorsed the view that the state had a minimal role to play when it came to meddling in finance and money markets.  Release the forces, cut back the state’s fetters.  The libertarian Truss got exactly what she deserved.

With stunning incoherence, Truss is convinced that those forces at work were all infected by a left-wing virus, from the administrative wonks and lever pullers in White Hall to humble teachers and charity workers.  Not that questionable, eccentric, even idiotic policies don’t find an audience in self-defeating bureaucracy.  They always do, and always will.  As an example of the latter Truss cites environmental policies that led to the construction of a “bat bridge” at considerable increased cost to expanding one of the local roads under her charge.

The shrill, unhinged analysis by Truss in this half-manifesto, half-lament, is mysteriously capable of identifying the left-wing virus in such conservative institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the Office for Budget Responsibility, bodies that found her promises of indulgent unfunded tax cuts in the September 2022 budget unworkable, even dangerous.  Throughout, she draws on the thesis of former US president Donald Trump of the “Deep State” that managed to hold her “at gunpoint”, one made up of a progressive and Marxist alliance that hates growth and cherishes decline.

A few observations, at a pinch, should be taken seriously.  The poor trappings of a British PM’s office are noted.  Truss makes the point that discharging its heavy burdens are made nigh impossible by institutional impediments.  The modern British prime minister “is treated like a president but has nothing like the kind of institutional support for the office that we would expect in a presidential system”.  But Truss tends to spoil such observations with trivial whines: that she had to do her own hair and make-up.

She also complains about the media saturated, short-term horizon that characterises the workings of Downing Street.  This is a tad rich coming from the same individual who made such extensive use of social media in her various postings, be it jogging in New York or driving a tank in military gear in Estonia.  During her stint as Foreign Secretary, she uploaded upwards of 700 pictures or more a day in what came to be derided as Instagram diplomacy.

The warnings for Truss’s demise were many.  Many came from close to home.  Her husband, Hugh O’Leary, predicted that her stint as prime minister would “all end in tears” though “accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn’t, people would say I had bottled it”.  She even writes of her Norfolk constituency political agent’s harsh assessment: “I should run – but he thought it would be best if I came second”.  The late Queen Elizabeth II, whose discussions with the prime minister of the day are, according to convention, never disclosed, is documented as giving the following advice: “Pace yourself.”  Truss concedes that she “should have listened”.

This grossly, at times embarrassingly uneven thesis of Western doom and necessary salvation, wrapped up in personal resentment, is unlikely to do much to change matters in the corridors of power.  But its occasional slips of candour and frequent revelations of sharp incompetence suggest that Truss’s 49 days in office were 49 days too many.Facebook

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

“Deadliest days” in the West Bank

by Tamara Nassar / April 25th, 2024

Muhammad Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, the leader of the Tulkarem Brigade militia in Nur Shams refugee camp, emerges among mourners after rumors of his killing in the northern occupied West Bank during a two-day military operation, on 21 April.  Mohammed Nasser APA images

The Israeli military carried out bloody carnage and destruction at the Nur Shams refugee camp and surrounding areas in Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank during a two-day raid this week.

During the 54-hour operation, at least 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, including three children. The Israeli military carried out the operation with domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet and Israel’s Border Police. The invading forces damaged and destroyed homes, commercial stores, roads and other infrastructure, and left at least 25 Palestinians injured in the wake of the military raid.

“The Israeli military invasion into Nur Shams refugee camp marks the deadliest days in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at Defense for Children International-Palestine.

On 18 April, more than 120 military vehicles carrying dozens of soldiers, Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported, invaded the Nur Shams refugee camp from multiple entrances and checkpoints, including through the Avnei Hefetz settlement, located on the western edge of the northern West Bank near Tulkarem.

Israeli troops besieged the camp, as well as several homes within it. Israeli troops occupied several homes, turning some of them into “military bases, barracks and observation points,” according to DCIP.

Israeli military reinforcements, including three bulldozers, sealed the camp trapping residents inside, while others were unable to enter. Throughout the military raid, Israeli troops deliberately prevented ambulances from reaching wounded and killed Palestinians, DCIP reported.

The Israeli invasion resulted in widespread devastation.

“Bullets and grenades have left gaping holes in the walls of homes. Fragments of shells and LAU missiles are strewn across open spaces,” Haaretz reported.

Israeli bulldozers demolished infrastructure in the camp. Israeli forces damaged electricity, water, sewage systems, and telecommunication networks, leading to power outages during the military raid.

Footage of ambulances arriving at the refugee camp after the withdrawal of Israeli forces shows them having to traverse the rubble of destroyed roads amidst damaged infrastructure and battered streets.

Citizens descrbe the camp’s condition as ‘Little Gaza,’ underscoring the extensive devastation caused by the occupation in just three days,” an analyst wrote in the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar.This is part of transferring “the model of extermination seen in the Gaza Strip, and preceding it, with the ‘Dahiya Doctrine,’ as a method of action for the enemy army when confronting resistance in the West Bank.”

The “Dahiya Doctrine” is a strategy named after the southern suburb of Beirut that Israel deliberately flattened, where Israel indiscriminately targets civilian areas in order to turn civilians against armed resistance in the area and bring them to their knees.

In this strategy, the occupation forces “are not satisfied with confronting the resistance fighters, but rather seek to transform the camps into places unsuitable for life.”

Armed resistance

Armed Palestinians in the camp confronted the Israeli invaders to protect their community, injuring several Israeli soldiers.

Despite initial reports indicating that he was killed, the leader of the Tulkarem Brigade, a group associated with Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance group, emerged among mourners in the camp following the Israeli withdrawal.

Pictures circulating on social media show an armed Muhammad Jaber, known among residents in the camp as Abu Shujaa, being borne on the shoulders of a crowd of Palestinians.

Our message is that we challenged the occupation, and here we are still alive,” Abu Shujaa told media following the military raid.

Children killed

Three children were among those slaughtered in the massacre.

Jihad Nyaz Naser Zandiq, a 15-year-old, was at home with his uncle when a group of armed Palestinians reportedly arrived on 19 April.

Israeli troops surrounded the house and ordered all its occupants to come out.

Despite Jihad and another Palestinian man exiting the house with their hands raised and declaring they were civilians, Israeli forces still opened fire, fatally shooting both of them.

Jihad’s body remained on the ground for 17 hours before a neighbor moved him into his house until Israeli forces withdrew from the camp, DCIP reported.

A 17-year-old boy was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli-fired shell on the same day.

Ali Mohammad Ali Abdullah, who allegedly participated in confronting the invading Israeli troops, was attempting to leave a neighborhood of the camp with another young man when he was struck.

He sustained burns and shrapnel wounds on his face and body, and his corpse remained on the ground until Israeli forces withdrew from the area, DCIP’s field investigation found.

An Israeli soldier, stationed in a heavily armored military vehicle, fatally shot a 14-year-old boy who was standing with a group of civilians at a roundabout in Tulkarem.

There were no confrontations between armed Palestinians and Israeli forces at the time, according to DCIP’s field investigation.

The soldier fired a bullet at Qais Fathi Ibrahim Nasrullah from a distance of 300 meters, striking him in the chest, according to DCIP.

Although the boy was rushed to the hospital by a private vehicle, he was pronounced dead minutes after arrival, despite efforts to resuscitate him.

Genocide alert

“Israel has employed a lethal open-fire policy in the West Bank” since 7 October, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued an “active genocide alert” over the situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declaring that “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians across Palestine.”

Earlier this month, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank accelerated as large groups of Israeli settler mobs launched attacks on more than a dozen Palestinian villages following the disappearance of an Israeli teenager.

Amnesty International highlighted an “alarming spike in violence” perpetrated by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The organization emphasized “the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation” and its system of apartheid.

The human rights organization implicitly rejected attempts to portray these attacks as isolated incidents caused by a few bad apples, as state sanctions against a handful of extremist settlers suggested.

“The appalling spike in settler violence against Palestinians in recent days is part of a decades-long state-backed campaign to dispossess, displace and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under Israel’s system of apartheid,” said Heba Morayef, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“Violence is integral to the establishment and expansion of these settlements and to sustaining apartheid,” she added.

“It’s time for the world to recognize this and pressure Israeli authorities to abide by international law by immediately halting settlement expansion and removing all existing settlements.”

• This article was first published in The Electronic Intifada
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Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada. Read other articles by Tamara, or visit Tamara's website.

 

Sprouting from Death

by Susan Abulhawa / April 25th, 2024

Rafah is already under attack; where will people go if Israel conducts a major offensive there?  Abed Rahim Khatib DPA via ZUMA Press

It’s almost 5 am in al-Mawasi Rafah. And we’ve been hearing the sounds of Israeli bombs since midday yesterday.

They’re intermittent, maybe two or three every couple of hours.

There’s a saying here that if you can hear them, then you’re okay. For reasons I don’t yet understand, people who are bombed don’t hear the explosive metallic hatred that buries them alive, tears their limbs, burns their faces and steals life from them even if they survive.

People no longer pay attention to their booms, except to utter ya sater, a perfunctory prayer to protect whomever, wherever.

As the world has gotten smaller and dimmer here, conversations swirl around two topics – food and bombs – repeating with daily updates. What did one eat, what is there to eat, what will one eat, how long will one’s stock last, how will they get the next meal, what aid has been allowed in, how high are the prices, how many have starved or are starving to death.

Apples were the talk of the town last week. They appeared in the market for the first time since Israel forbade, then restricted the entry of foods.

For the majority of Palestinians here, it was their first taste of fresh fruit in almost seven months. Those with mobile phones filmed their first bites.

Other fresh foods have not followed, but apples abound, even though most cannot afford them.

Talk surrounding bombs are more varied. Of course, it’s not just bombs, but tanks and snipers, spy and killer drones and a host of other death technology.

Imminent assault

Most agree that an assault on Rafah – Gaza’s southernmost city – is imminent. A video circulating social media shows an Israeli commander hyping up his unit by promising they will wipe Rafah away like they did Shujaiya, Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis.

The soldiers grunt and cheer, affirming the fervor of genocide.

“Have you seen the video?” some ask.

But most have not. They don’t have internet.

“Where are we supposed to go now?” they ask.

The poet Mahmoud Darwish once asked, “Where do birds fly after the last sky?”

The meager tents of the displaced have already taken root. The precarious assemblage of string, cloth, wood and plastic have been filled with items slowly accumulated over half a year of a Zionist genocidal war.

Donated stove plates and propane tanks, plates and flatware, blankets, clothes, bedrolls, notebooks, food, toothbrushes and other things of living neatly arranged on makeshift shelves and hooks, cannot be easily moved.

“How can we carry it all?”

“How do we move again?”

People are tired.

“My heart can’t take it. Just let them bomb us. Death is better than this life.”

Where are we supposed to go now?

Where do birds fly after the last sky?

To Nuseirat in the Middle Area. That’s the rumor.

Tanks just pulled out of there. But snipers are still positioned in some buildings, so we hear.

And Israel keeps bombing places they’ve evacuated. Like Khan Younis.

Burning our history

Majeda, my friend of over 20 years, takes me to Khan Younis to see the grim remains of her beloved city, her house and neighborhood. This once vibrant ancient town of multi-storied family homes, gardens, color, music, restaurants, souqs, shops and cafés has been transformed into a gray landscape of rubble, chewed up roads, crushed cars, decaying bodies, emaciated animals, dead animals and dust so thick it simply cannot settle.

You breathe it in as you walk through this architecture of colonial jealousy, hatred, supremacy and greed.

“This is where the family books were.” Majeda points to an area of white ash.

“Strange how small the ash pile is for so many hundreds of books,” she says.

I know she’s not just talking about the number of those books, but the vast world they contained.

These weren’t ordinary books. The novels and usual sort were in another room, in another ash pile.

These books were precious and irreplaceable handwritten texts.

Majeda comes from a prominent family that held positions of authority and kept social and legal records over centuries of contiguous life in that ancient city – land purchases, birth and death records, family disputes, marriages, crimes, money accounts, food stocks, wars and more. Leatherbound and stacked on the shelves of their family home, those books had been a family anchor to a fabled history that Zionists covet and claim as their own.

Only by burning our lived history can foreigners replace it with their biblical mythos and fantasy.

My friend points to a fallen tree trunk splayed across what used to be the entrance to her house, where most of the ancient tile is thankfully still intact and can be salvaged. “This was a Christmas tree my dad planted about 30 years ago,” she says.

They’re Muslim, but like most Palestinian Muslims, she loves and celebrates Christmas.

“How long do you think it would take to rebuild the city if we had all the money and materials we need?” my friend asks me. She poses the same question to everyone who has witnessed the unimaginable destruction I saw.

A year, I think.

“No, I think I can rebuild my house in six months,” she insists.

I had given her the wrong answer. But she agrees it will take decades to restore their garden.

Lemon, olive, peach, clementine and orange trees take at least that long to mature.

“But look!”

She points to a green stem and leaf sprouting from the charred remnants of a bombed tree.

This ordinary manifestation of ordinary botanical cycles feels like a miracle. To her (and I admit to me, too), it is a promise that Gaza’s native life will return.

It will sprout from death, because the colonizer’s bombs cannot reach the depths of her people’s roots, no matter how much of us they burn, kill or break.

• First published in The Electronic IntifadaFacebook

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Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian-American writer and human rights activist. She is the author of several books and the founder of a non-governmental organisation, Playgrounds for Palestine. Read other articles by Susan, or visit Susan's website.