Rio Olympics 2016: Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby sent home for handshake snub

[shira]

1. JPost Editorial: A handshake’s importance

One of the goals of the Olympic Games is to bring together the nations of the world to compete in an atmosphere of good sportsmanship and mutual respect....

...Peace between Israel and Egypt must not be only between governments. It must also be fostered between peoples. Shehaby had a chance to make a public display of the potential for such peace. Unfortunately, he squandered it.

In contrast, during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Luz Long used a handshake to reject Nazism’s racist ideology. After losing to Jesse Owens in the long jump competition, the German athlete approached Owens before hundreds of thousands of spectators and shook Owens’s hand.

Owen later said of that experience: “You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24 karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment.”

The power of a handshake should not be underestimated.

http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=464103