France wins Olympic gold for hypocrisy

It took some heroic athletes from the Algerian Olympic team to pour cold water on the ghastly spectacle of a flotilla on the River Seine as French President Emanuel Macron tried to bask in a spectacle of French culture when Paris welcomed the world’s greatest athletes for a sporting extravaganza.

These Olympic Games have been mired in controversy from the start, not least because of the appearance of the Israel team even as the occupation state is carrying out a “plausible” genocide in Gaza. Millions of people have signed petitions calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban Israel, whose athletes and officials will almost certainly have all served in a brutal army which is under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Russian and Belarus athletes have been banned from the Paris Olympics because of the former’s invasion of Ukraine, and possible Russian sabotage sparked fears ahead of the Paris Games. Many have drawn attention to the double standards of excluding Russia while allowing Israel to take part.

The only show of defiance in the face of French pomposity, was apparently during the opening ceremony as the flag-waving Algerian Olympic team cruised down the Seine braving torrential rain while some 300,000 people lined the river banks to cheer on the armada. Dropping blood red roses into the river, the athletes paid poignant homage to the memory of the brave Algerian independence campaigners whose lives were ended in a manner which will forever stain the so-called City of Love.

The haughty French colonised Algeria for 132 years. They must have overlooked — by accident or design — a crime which was still obviously on the mind of every Algerian who took part the Olympic Games opening ceremony last week which was planned to promote the city’s iconic sights: the Eiffel Tower bearing the five Olympic rings, the Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral. The wildly ambitious programme was the first time that an Olympic opening ceremony has been staged outside the main stadium, making it the biggest-ever launch for the “Greatest Show on Earth”. The planners missed the fact that it took place at the scene of a crime against humanity which will forever blight the French capital.

READ: At least 8 killed in Israeli strikes on ‘humanitarian zone’ in southern Gaza

On 17 October, 1961, police commander Maurice Papon ordered his officers to attack a peaceful demonstration of thousands of Algerians who were marching in support of their country’s independence. According to eyewitnesses, the French police deliberately killed dozens of demonstrators in the streets and Metro stations, and threw some of the wounded into the River Seine to drown. At least 120 Algerians were killed. I fancied that the downpour was because the clouds were weeping for the souls of those who were slaughtered by French police, or even the 400 Palestinian athletes from Gaza killed by Israeli bombs since last October.

The 1961 massacre was a state crime for which neither Macron nor his predecessors have ever apologised.

He tweeted last year on the 61st anniversary of the massacre: “They are crimes that cannot be justified for the Republic. France does not forget the victims. Truth is the only way to a common future.” Despite his weasel words, which have yet to be backed up by a full apology, Macron wanted the River Seine to be the centrepiece of the Olympic opening ceremony.

Reviewers who were either ignorant of the Algerian massacre or simply not bothered about it, heaped praise on Thomas Jolly, the 42-year-old French director who created the surreal and irreverent opening ceremony. Exactly what happened to the Algerians in Paris in 1961 had obviously passed Jolly by. He said loftily that he did not want just “ephemeral glitz” but an exploration of what underpins “our shared humanity”.

Where was the “shared humanity” when Muslim women and girls were banned by France from wearing the hijab, which basically excluded them from competing at the Olympic Games? Clearly, such breaches of international human rights laws and the discrimination of the French authorities were overlooked by Jolly and condoned, it must be said, by the IOC.

Had he really wanted to be irreverent, he could have highlighted the hijab ban and referenced the 1961 Paris Massacre subliminally instead of choosing the safe option of promoting faux togetherness and unity in a world that is suffering from wars, man-made famine and political upheavals.

When four jets from the French air force display team drew a large pink heart in the Paris sky to set the tone of white culture, arts and history in France, it looked as though the West’s steady march to the right, increasing xenophobia and racism, Islamophobia and Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian children and women in Gaza are all happening in another world.

There has been little or no leadership from the IOC about this. The committee proved to be too weak to stand up for the 37 per cent of Muslim women from North Africa who choose to wear a hijab in France, said Amnesty. During the four-hour ceremony, France’s national motto of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity), was rinsed of all meaning by ignoring athletes like French Olympic sprinter Sounkamba Sylla, who took to social media days a few days ago saying that she would not be allowed to participate in the opening ceremony because of her hijab. She opted to wear a cap to get around the racist rules in a compromise which confounded the French authorities.

Meanwhile, Jolly briefed journalists enthusiastically, telling them that he chose the Seine for its “power to heal” from tragedies such as Paris’s 2015 terrorist attacks, as well as the 2019 fire at Notre Dame. Indeed, part of the show was a spectacular pre-filmed dance routine of workers performing high-risk moves while hanging off the scaffolding around Notre Dame.

But there wasn’t a single mention of the 1961 Paris Massacre of Algerians.

In an interview with Vogue magazine, Jolly gushed about how he had explored LGBTQ+ themes in his stage work to ensure that the opening ceremony demonstrated that there “is room for everyone” in Paris. The opening ceremony will be a success only “if everyone feels represented in it,” he added. Unless you are Algerian or wear hijab, of course; or a Palestinian whose Olympic team was not properly represented because of the 400 athletes killed by Israel, whose own athletes are inexplicably being allowed to participate despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

If inclusivity was the aim, Monsieur Jolly, your ceremony was an epic fail. Where it did succeed, however, was in highlighting the hypocrisy of “shared Western values”. Thanks to Jolly, France has won Olympic gold for Liberté, Égalité, Hypocrisie.

 ‘Watering down’ genocide: No more moral compromises on Palestine, please

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.