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31 August 2012 By Stuart
Littlewood Palestine's Olympians have gone
home, and not even ardent supporters like me were
aware they'd been here. That's a slight exaggeration. We caught a brief glimpse of them
on TV in the opening parade. But the first real indication
that they were living, breathing, approachable people
was an email from the General Union of Palestinian
Students saying: "The Palestinian Olympic team will be
at Hyde Park at 1pm today," giving just a few hours'
notice. Not much use to us folks living outside
London. And by then there were only 4 days of the
Olympics left. It played like a re-run of last
year's extraordinary effort by engineering students
from the Gaza Strip who took on the cream of Europe's
technical universities in a competition to build a
race car. Construction had to conform to nearly 30
pages of rules and regulations. The cars then went to
Silverstone, the home of Formula One racing, to be
scrutinised. They were also put through performance
and endurance trials on the track. The lads from Khan Younis
Training Centre (KYTC) in the Gaza Strip finalised the
plans for their car, identified the parts they needed
and contacted various suppliers around the world, only
to be turned down time and again. Eventually a firm in
Italy agreed to help, but the parts they sent were
blocked by the Israelis from entering Gaza. Undaunted, the team improvised by
salvaging parts from old cars and machinery. The
engine came from a used Honda motorcycle and the
chassis was fabricated with domestic hot water pipes.
Nevertheless they did so well at Silverstone that Dr
Colin Brown, Director of Engineering at IMechE (the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers), which runs the
Formula Student competition, declared: "It really is
inspirational to see a team working so hard with the
odds stacked against them like this... Working with
almost entirely recycled parts in one of the most
deprived areas in the world is remarkable. These
students epitomise the spirit and inventiveness of
those who take part in Formula Student." What had the Palestinian embassy
in the UK done to promote the team and its astonishing
achievement? Nothing. I only heard about it months
later. Even then the embassy ignored requests for
names and contact details, so I had to salvage what I
could of this remarkable story through UNRWA. The embassy has shown the same
lackadaisical attitude to its brave Olympic team, who
similarly took on the best in the world with (so to
speak) one hand tied behind their backs. No lessons have been learned. The embassy has my name and email
address and sends me endless invitations to
inconsequential social events. But no invitation to
meet and write about the Olympic team. So I emailed
the ambassador, Manuel Hassassian: "What is the
embassy doing, please, to make sure full advantage is
taken of the Olympic Team's presence in London and to
impress upon the world and especially Palestine's
sympathisers the team members' achievements, the
difficulties they face at home under occupation, their
hopes for the future and how exposure at the London
Games might impact on the future of sport and its
funding in the OPT. How long are they staying in the
UK? Will they be touring the country?" A reply came from an unnamed
individual. "This is a great opportunity to showcase
Palestine. Our participation is a clear message to the
world that we are a united people... Our team was
able to defy occupation despite the limited
facilities. We are positive that you have been keeping
up with all the media coverage and attention that our
team has received. Most of the media coverage was
liaised through our office. The team is accompanied by
a press officer... We have had a wide coverage from
local and foreign news channels, media and even
filmmakers... The team was meant to go to Sheffield
but due to time constraints the event was called off.
Unfortunately the team have left on Friday..." What media coverage? Fellow
campaigners tell me they too have seen little if any,
although some mentioned an Al Arabiya report. British
and American audiences matter most - they are the ones
Palestinians need to influence. I also emailed the team's press
officer: "Do you have a press or media pack for
journalists? Photos? Where do you get your contact
list? I would suggest in future that you make sure
people like me who write regularly about Palestine in
numerous international news and opinion sites are kept
fully in the picture..." Needless to say, I haven't had a
reply. I would have loved to hear
first-hand the stories of those five Olympians - Maher
Abu Ramila the judo veteran, Waroud Sawalha and Bahha
Farra the two 400 metre runners, and Ahmad Jibril and
Sabine Hazboun the two freestyle swimmers. They all
battled against unimaginably poor training facilities
and a serious lack of competition, but their
exceptional grit and determination brought them to the
London Games. And now that the 2012 Games have
finished Palestinians need to decide what they really
want of their small handful of Olympic athletes and
where they go from here. For starters let's see all those
destroyed sports facilities rebuilt. And let's see
Israel drummed out of the Olympic movement if it dares
to touch them again. The London ambassador and his
bosses in Ramallah have been urged many times to take
lessons in media skills. But they refuse to do so and
remain media slouches, allowing Israel's well-honed
propaganda machine to run rings round them and bury
all hopes of freedom, advancement and statehood.
Ignorant and lazy, they are despised by
pro-Palestinians and are no match for the
resourcefulness and sheer determination of their young
people. It won't matter how hard
Palestine's Olympic and other sporting teams train and
perform, what sacrifices they make in going for gold,
or how superhuman their efforts to do something for
Palestine... the Palestinian Authority's
good-for-nothing politicians - those long-time losers
- will always let the side down. I'm told the students union,
which was housed at the embassy, got so fed up it
moved out. They say the place is full of overpaid
people who do nothing. True or false? By your deeds (or misdeeds) shall
ye be judged. I have my own theory: the Fatah-controlled
PA/PLO and its embassies, as vassals of Washington and
Tel Aviv, are under strict orders not to make waves or
embarrass the Israeli regime. Silence and incompetence
are the required skills, which they have in spades.
It's long past time for Hassassian to pack his bags,
switch the lights off in his wretched embassy and
return to the Ramallah compound. One is left to speculate what
sort of Palestinian embassy the Hamas government would
have run if the Western Enlightenment had accepted its
democratic credentials. Stuart Littlewood's book
Radio Free Palestine,
with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can now be read on the
internet by visiting
www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.
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