JERUSALEM — Despite hesitations and many cancellations, the Maccabiah Games are set to start July 16, against all odds.
Organizers of the 16th Maccabiah Games had been expected to announce last Friday that the event would be postponed — for the first time since World War II — until next summer.
Instead, at the last minute, the steering committee decided to hold the Games as scheduled after Maccabi-USA announced it would send a delegation after all — a 180-degree turnaround from its position in early June.
Maccabi-USA’s executive committee voted overwhelmingly June 14 to send a contingent, just 12 days after taking an equally lopsided vote to postpone the Games for a year and keep American athletes at home.
Bob Spivak, Maccabi-USA’s president, said that between the two votes Israeli officials assuaged many of the Americans’ main concerns, primarily by organizing social events for the athletes.
“We weren’t concerned about safety when the athletes were competing or traveling,” said the Philadelphia-based Spivak. “We were wondering about when the kids wandered off to do things. That was a big concern. Having planned activities helps a lot. They were not real tough on us…they wanted to know what were the biggest concerns we had and what they could do to make us feel more comfortable.”
Spivak said he has received confirmations from roughly 260 American athletes, almost 100 cancellations and no word from another 200. He estimated that the United States would send half of its athletes to a Maccabiah Games featuring about 2,000 participants — a huge drop from the 5,000 who initially registered.
San Francisco investor Gary Shemano, a gold-medal winning golfer in the Maccabiah Games of 1980 and ’97, was gratified by Maccabi-USA’s decision.
“I personally felt Israel should not cancel the Games. Israel’s policy has always been to never give in to terrorism, and the U.S. was basically asking them to change their policy. I think it would have been a terrible message,” said Shemano, a member of the advisory board of the U.S. Committee for Sports Israel.
“This issue has ripped the Maccabi movement in the United States right in half. It’s an individual decision you have to make.”
Following Maccabi-USA’s announcement, other delegations — from South Africa, Canada and Australia — quickly announced that they, too, would attend. The British delegation adamantly announced it would not field a team. Spivak said Tuesday, however, that Israeli Maccabi officials confirmed to him that Britain would send “whoever wants to go.”
Spivak claimed that the Israelis neither strong-armed nor pleaded with the American committee, which he said was not sold on the claim that only the United States’ participation could save the Games.
“We didn’t have any guilt feelings about killing the Games for them,” he said. “We were concerned about our own group of kids. “
Due to the low turnout, the Games have been trimmed from 10 days to just seven. The question of whether the Games would be held at all followed the recent announcement by the U.S. Reform movement that it is canceling its summer youth camps this year in Israel.
Both developments drew the ire of Israeli officials, who maintain that now especially, when Israelis feel they are under siege from Palestinian terror attacks and international criticism, world Jewry should make good on its frequent protestations of unity.
By canceling trips, however, diaspora Jews were refusing to show solidarity with Israel at this difficult time, Israeli officials charged.
Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh spoke earlier this month of the “disgraceful” behavior of those “who for all these years have talked to us about the unity of the Jewish people over mounds of bagels and lox.”
This week, government officials reacted gratefully to the decision to proceed with the Games. Science, Culture and Sports Minister Matan Vilnai announced that the move “was right because the Maccabiah is not a regular event, and because any other decision could have put the entire Maccabiah project in jeopardy.”
The decision was “an important test for the solidarity of the Jewish people with Israel in those difficult times that we face,” he said.
Michael Melchior, deputy foreign affairs minister, originally showed understanding for the hesitations of Jewish athletes to attend the Games. However, he was one of the key figures in persuading the delegations to send their members, urging world Jewry to do its utmost to assure full participation.
The Israeli public, meanwhile, reacted with relative indifference to the announcement that the Games would go on. An opinion poll on the Internet edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot showed that 50 percent supported the decision as a way of showing world Jewry that “business in Israel” was proceeding “as usual.”
However, a poll in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv found that 56 percent do not intend to come to the Maccabiah Games to show solidarity with the Jewish athletes.
When it looked probable last week that the Games would be put off, many Israeli politicians said it would represent a slap in Israel’s face from world Jewry.
“Canceling the Maccabiah or postponing it is like granting Yasser Arafat the gold medal,” said Knesset member Eliezer Sandberg.