Olympic Games – Globalism, Nationalism and What between?

Menachem Rabinovitz*

When the blue and white flag was high in the sky and Israeli national song was heard, I felt some tears on my eyes. The Israeli first gold medal drove me for some thinking.
I was asking myself: what is it about nationalism that drive us to cry?
As Isaiah Berlin taught us, the rumors about the death of nationalism were too early.
The Olympic games, as a symbol of globalism, are based on the national spirit, they have the form of the global event but they contain particular values. The value of competing nations is the same in Olympics or in politics, economics or wars. The value of accumulation of goods is the same whenever it is gold medals or money.
If we evaluate globalism by the dominance of the national value – we have to think over if Olympics is a global ceremony.
Why, for example, the Olympic commission would not decide to have a run of 4x100 with the best 4 runners in the world which would run against the clock?
Why the economists are developing models which try to find out the connection between gold medals and national virtues? What is it said on America and china, the leading gold medal nations? I cannot ignore the values of brotherhood and peace which are also in the base of the Olympics. What I try to find out is the tension between these universal values and the particular ones.
The Israeli first gold medal gave Israel some days of pride and glory. Indeed, the gold medal did not changed the poor political reality. The values that helped Gal Friedman win the medal were courage, decisiveness hope and never giving up in the face of reality. These are the values that created the state of Israel and drove Zionism. These are the values of the Israeli defense process. These are also the values of the western economic systems. The sad story is that these are also the values of the Israeli politicians and statesmen. Who do not succeed to solve the local conflict.
So, we have a gold medal, we made it!! And I admit I cried. The first tears were tears of joy, but the last tears were tears of anger – anger on the manipulation I had gone through that planted in me this virus, anger on the elusion that it gave us and anger that this Olympic festival did not bring any peace to the world and no health for all the suffering people in Sudan.
I think some millions of dollars which were invested in securing the games could help some of them , don’t they?

Jerusalem, Semptember 6th 2004


*Menachem Rabinonitz, 35, has a Master in History of Ideas and is a PhD candidate in the field of Policy and Philosophy. He is a graduate of the exclusive leadership two-years programme of the Mandel School in Jerusalem. He is an high school director and an educational adviser. In these days he intends to establish a new think tank in Israel which will promote a rational civil thinking in Israel with co-operation with leading European think tanks like Vision. He is co-author of Vision collection “Il Sonno della Ragione” (Reset 2004).


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