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Fun and Games By Sayed Kashua Tags: Beijing, Olympics Oh, the Olympics, the Olympics. How I love the Games. "We'll be in the new house for the Olympics," I promised about a month ago (as my wife just reminded me), when the renovations began. And now the Olympics are here and there's no electricity yet in the new house. I watch the Games as much as I can, mainly the competitions in the early morning hours, before I embark on another day of renovations in the Holy City. I return to my parents' home in the evening, when the Chinese have already gone to sleep, and console myself by watching the summaries of the day that was in Beijing, before I go to sleep. Every four years I promise myself that I'll take part in the next Olympics. I'm not saying that within four years I will suddenly be able to become an outstanding runner or a super-swimmer. However, I think four years is more than enough time to get ready for competing in all kinds of sports, and even to win a medal or two in them. An event such as fencing, for example, which is not exactly fencing - I mean, those aren't swords with which knights smite their rivals. The whole thing looks more like a battle of car antennae, and I waged battles with car antennae when I was still a little boy. They hardly move in fencing, so that you don't need any great physical fitness; you stick the antenna in your rival's chest and a light goes on. In my opinion, I could really succeed at fencing. Advertisement As opposed to fencing, which demands that you take a step backward or forward from time to time, target shooting - which involves pistols and rifles - is a sport that in my opinion has no requirements at all. If the country were to grant a gun permit to someone like me, I would easily earn the country four medals. These sorts of events make me wonder every four years how they decide which sport is worthy of being in the Olympics, and how exactly its international committee decides what will or won't be accepted. Why is target shooting with a pistol a sport, whereas throwing stones at a police jeep isn't? Why do they give a medal for shooting with a bow and arrow, but not with a slingshot? The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that a conspiracy by Western countries is dictating the choice of various branches of sport, so that they will suit the abilities of their sportsmen. Since they discovered that the Africans run and jump faster, the whites have decided to add additional competitions that the poorer nations will never be able to compete in. What can you do if in Ethiopia there is no abundance of tennis courts, swimming pools and gymnasiums? Moreover, they have introduced branches of sport that require the purchase of expensive equipment: kayaks, sailboats, rifles. And even bows and arrows have to be regulation and probably each set costs at least NIS 5,000, not including the arrows. A conspiracy is the only explanation I can think of when I try to understand why synchronized swimming is an Olympic event. In a perfect world, everyone has to be given a chance. So let's hope that in the next Games we'll see contestants competing for a medal in events such as constructing a concrete wall, mixing cement, milking cows, cleaning stairs, and digging sewage ditches along the roads of the capital of the host country. In spite of the Olympic racism, I tend to forgive the committee, because I can't help loving those Games. I'm so addicted to the Olympics that I've stopped listening to music in the car, and prefer to tune into the news stations to hear about the latest developments in the Chinese arena - between my trips to the building materials and electrical appliances stores. "Whatever they do," said Avri Gilad on the radio this week, discussing the impressive opening ceremony of the Chinese, "I hate them." He was so vehement that I was sure that Chinese laborers had screwed up his bathroom floor. Gilad, a broadcaster whom I admired while I was still in high school, has to be right, there's no question about it. Indeed, no one is more right than he in this whole country. His words made me reconsider whether I really want to continue to watch the Games, or to boycott them for ideological reasons. I'm not sure exactly what the Chinese did. In a general way, I know about Tibet, human rights and ceramics that break too easily. But I agree that a country that conquers another nation, uses military force to rob a person of his freedom, tramples human and civil rights, punishes entire populations and detains them without blinking an eye, discriminates against its inhabitants on religious grounds, arrests leaders of another nation and assassinates them and scatters their demonstrations with live fire - that is a country which definitely ought to be boycotted. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Tears of joy Shahar Zubari's bronze medal was Israel's first of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 'Germ of corruption' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats his prediction that Israel will be wiped off the map.   1.   olympics 08:44  |  rachel 17/08/08   2.   Kashua 09:40  |  Somebody 17/08/08   3.   kashua 10:13  |  rachel 17/08/08   4.   are you right to judge who is right to be boycotted? 18:37  |  jade 17/08/08

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