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Were there fewer attacks on innocent non-Jews during the 1948 war than today? Did the horrible murder of 47 residents of Kafr Qasem in 1956 take place under a right-wing government? Are the positions of the communities that don’t accept Arabs so different from those of the kibbutzim that since the beginning of Zionist settlement have refused to accept a single Arab?

Although GANEFO’s genesis was related to diplomatic problems that arose from Indonesia’s hosting of the IV^th Asian Games in 1962 and the subsequent suspension of the Indonesian Olympic Committee, it was also an explicit attempt to link sport to the politics of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and the emergence of the Third World.

Hosting the Olympics on the world stage provides host governments with the incentive to bail out fiscal mishaps so as to avoid embarrassment under the global media spotlight. Knowing this allows private firms to relinquish responsibility when the going gets rough.

What was so marvellous to Benjamin about this goofy, eternally hovering angel with hair that looks like paper scrolls, aerodynamically hopeless wings and googly if rather melancholy eyes? “This,” he wrote in one of his greatest essays, “is how one pictures the angel of history.”