The Beauty and the Ugliness at the Winter Games

 This article first appeared in Times of Israel Blogs.

While I am not particularly interested in the Winter Olympics per se, having lived in Milan from 1982-1987, I have been viewing this past week’s events with more than a passing interest. The opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro Stadium was particularly interesting for me since for a couple of years, my family and I actually resided directly across the street from the stadium, on via Tesio. The ceremony itself was a thing of beauty, as I knew the Italians would produce, having previously seen how they put on the 1990 World Cup. 

Not so beautiful was what has been going on outside the events in Milan and Cortina. Italian police have had their hands full with all the protesters, who have been determined to disrupt the games. It was feared that the rioters might even crash through police barricades and make it into the stadium to shut down the opening ceremony itself. Fortunately, that did not happen, but before the ceremony itself on the evening of February 6, police had to battle thousands of protesters in the streets of Italy’s second-largest city. 

In addition, other miscreants managed to sabotage the Italian rail system, cutting rail cables in places like Bologna and Pesaro, causing massive delays, not to mention endangering travelers. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was understandably outraged and said in a social media posting that “demonstrators against the Olympic games were enemies of Italy”.

But just who are these characters to begin with? It seems they have a variety of grievances. Some proclaim that capitalism is destroying the natural environment for profit. For example, to make room for certain events, trees have been cut down on the slopes. Others object to the presence of agents from the American ICE agency, reportedly to act as advisors to security forces. Others were angered by the appearance of Vice President Vance. In general, we have the forces of the extreme left, Antifa, and other anarchists.

And in yet another example of the marriage of the left and the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, Islamists, there is outrage that an Israeli team is taking part in the games. Indeed, the pro-Palestinian element is quite in evidence, as shown by the number of Palestinian flags and keffiyahs among many of the protesters. The same crowd is also up in arms over the recent arrest of a Muslim community leader in Genoa named Mohammad Hannoun, accused with others of raising “charitable” funds for Hamas to the tune of 7 million euros. Last month, the pro-Palestinians disrupted Holocaust remembrance commemorations in various Italian cities. Meanwhile, Italian journalists working for Il Giornale have been receiving threats for reporting on all these shenanigans.

It is impossible to predict what may happen in Italy over the remaining course of the Winter Olympics. Meloni’s government is promising to crack down with new legislation, being the one  Western European government willing to say that they have had enough. The Italian people have certainly had enough.