From the latest Tom Gross Dispatch:
“Young female athletes from Israel’s fencing team won top medals at a 28-nation European fencing tournament held in Mödling, Austria last week. But they then faced an additional challenge when they stood on the winners’ podium to receive their medals: the organizers refused to play the recording of the Israeli national anthem.
“The defiant young Israelis, gold medal winner Dana Strelnikov, aged 14, and Alona Kamarov, who won the bronze, found themselves standing on the podium in silence, but then decided to sing the Israeli anthem on their own. The Israeli team’s staff said they had no doubt that the Austrian refusal to play the Israeli anthem was intentional.
“Dana Strelnikov’s achievement in beating 120 fencers aged up to 17 was all the more remarkable considering she is only 14 years old. Both girls are from the northern Israeli town of Ma’alot, a town particularly hard hit by terrorist attacks in the past.
“The Israeli national fencing team’s coach, Yaakov Friedman, said it is not the first time that such an incident has happened this year. At a tournament in Göteborg, Sweden, in January, Israel won the silver medal and when the medalists mounted the podium the organizers refused to play the Israeli anthem.”
Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, is heartbreaking, joyous and inspiring all at once. Likewise, while the above story undoubtedly has the capacity to both upset and anger, most of all it should inspire. The quiet courage and dignity of those two Israelis reflects the shining moral example that their nation all too often sets to us all. Kol hakovod.
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Well put Mr
One would have thought, bearing in mind some of its unforunate sons and situations, Austria might think twice about being vicious to Jews, wouldn’t you? A friend who lives there tells me that the undercurrent of genuine, old-fashioned hardcore antisemitism there is as strong as it’s ever been. It’s like an infection which simply never went away. So these stories aren’t exactly a surprise.
“Hatikvah” is included in every collection of National Anthems (written or recorded music) that I have come across. As a very musical nation I imagine Austria must have access to many more than that. It is not an obscure anthem so any excuses along those lines can be safely discounted.
For shame! They could have played the Czech composer Smetana’s similar melody instead! ;~)
Antisemitism really is on the rise, it seems, but all praise to those two plucky girls.