A Conversation with San Charles Haddad

Media Contact: Devon Brown, Publicity. Post Hill Press. E:[email protected]. P: 615-261-4646 x104.

Q: What inspired you to write The File ?

A: There were several factors, an important one going all the way back to 2002. When I lived in Gaza between 2002 and 2004, I was on close terms with the former secretary general of the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC). Abu Hussein once cautioned me in a conversation about the history of the POC, pointing out that it was not quite like what I was hearing in office conversations. I asked for clarification, and he breathed in deeply and just replied that it was, “very difficult.” During the same conversation we discussed the attack in Munich, and Abu Hussein warned me never to believe that Munich was a good idea, a success, or even justified. It was he who first piqued my interest in researching the topic.

Today, the dire situation in the Middle East is what finally provoked me to write the book, after putting it off for years. The File includes history that needed to be revealed so that people can recalibrate their thinking. The book tells a story of how Palestinian sport dangerously misread the global political landscape in the early 1930s.

The political choices ahead are hard, but at least one non-political choice is simple: the Palestinian Olympic and sport movements should choose to divorce from politics completely and permanently. Only then can Palestinian sport organizations see what good might emerge. I believe this course of action is what Abu Hussein insinuated when he cautioned me in the early 2000s about accepting our oral sport histories as fact.

Q: What do you hope is the biggest takeaway from the book?

A: A sense of restoration, learning the truth, and using that to find a way forward.

Q: Can you talk a bit about the events of the 1972 Olympics in Munich and how it is related to the 1936 ‘Nazi Olympics?’

A: At a very superficial yet equally fundamental level, Berlin and Munich are interconnected because the 1936 Berlin Games are the lynchpin that determine Israel’s recognition in international sport in 1934, albeit as “Palestine.” While this came at the exclusion of the Arab Palestinians, this exclusion occurred because of the strategic and tactical errors in the Arab camp. This pivotal recognition related to the fate of Jews in Germany around the Berlin Games, which was a matter that remained at the forefront of the minds of the organizers of the 1972 Games in Munich.

So why did the Palestinians attack the Munich Games? In order to understand the attack, one must understand the rationale. Politically and militarily, we know that the stated aim was to achieve a prisoner exchange. But for the point I want to make, I am more interested in relaying how the attack is collectively remembered and discussed in living room conversations by many Palestinians, for whom Munich is a completely justified attack. If you ask them why, the answer is usually something along the lines of the attack representing logical retribution for Israel “stealing” Palestine and the consequent suffering of the Palestinian people. While this reply is nothing new, it requires that we ask the question, “What was Palestine’s position in international sport during the Mandate and how was this position stolen?”

The File confirms that no national governing structure for sport was stolen from Arab Palestinians in 1934 or 1948. Quite the opposite: a hard offer for cooperation was on the table from the Jewish sport leadership during the Mandate, all the way up to the outbreak of open hostilities. Especially in the early part of the Mandate, a lot of progress had been made through sport. We now know that Jewish sport was not just posturing or pretending, even if it was certainly strategic. But instead of cooperating with Jewish sport on Olympic governance, in September 1933, Palestinians walked away, apparently preferring a Nazi pathway to Berlin (and possibly a desired Olympic recognition). Only a few weeks later, Jewish sport leaders received the coveted Olympic recognition for Palestine, having proven themselves to be the more reliable custodians of the Olympic Movement for that territory. What transpired in The File might just be one of the Arab Palestinians’ greatest strategic (even moral) failings of the period.

By the time the decision was made to attack Munich in 1972, a revived Palestine Olympic Committee—this time Arab—had been formed under the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The people who formed this Olympic committee seem to have known about the Mandate-era one. Remember that the alleged PLO’s outreach to the IOC about a Palestinian delegation attending the Games in Munich occurred only 24 years after the last Arab Palestinian correspondences that sought affiliation to international sport—correspondences referencing “Zionist domination” of national sport governance in Mandate Palestine. We know from Issam Khalidi’s work that the author of many of these correspondences eventually became a central figure in Jordan’s sport system. The PLO was based in Jordan until the government crackdown in September 1970, a conflict that led to thousands of dead and became known in Palestinian history as “Black September.” The faction that attacked the Israeli delegation at the Munich Games adopted this name. This is not to say that Jordan or Jordanian sport were involved in any way with Munich: they were not. I am simply pointing out that some of the main actors of Palestinian sport from the Mandate era were, by 1970, operating in Jordan, either within the Jordanian sport system or within the PLO. Everyone knew everyone’s history, irrespective of the system they worked within.

In hindsight, it’s easy to overlook the proximity of events because today it all feels like such distant history. But Munich occurred only 36 years after Berlin. As in the case of Jordan, at the IOC many of the key people who were handling the Palestine file in the 1930s and 1940s were still around the IOC in 1972. The most important of these people was president Avery Brundage, who ascended to the IOC in 1936 for a number of reasons, not the least of which was his role in defeating the Berlin boycott effort. Brundage was subsequently central to blocking recognition of Israel in 1948 and ultimately found himself in the uncomfortable position, in 1972, of presiding over the memorial service for the slain Israeli athletes in the Olympic stadium.

When I lived in Gaza, I was told on several occasions that Munich had two targets: Israel and the IOC. The latter was apparently targeted for awarding Olympic recognition to a Zionist dominated Olympic Committee during the Mandate. Israel might hold confirmation of the substance of such claims in the PLO archives, which it acquired during its invasion of Lebanon in 1982: we’ll have to await archival confirmation of such disputable claims when those archives are returned as part of any final peace agreement and made available for research. Nevertheless, the Munich attack does follow a pattern of higher-profile attacks of the time, some of which targeted other trans-organizational systems deemed harmful to the Palestinian cause. One such example is the 1975 OPEC Siege, in which the armed faction of the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked the global oil cartel’s session in Vienna, killed three, and took oil ministers from several member countries hostage.

So, the fact that I heard such claims while in Gaza points to an enduring awareness within the PLO that Zionism had achieved something very significant in 1934 (with the Olympic recognition). According to the logic, because the IOC had made this achievement possible, it deserved to be punished, too. On the surface, it makes sense: hit the IOC where it hurts and force it to roll back its decision. The irony—or perhaps tragedy—is that the Palestinian narrative was selective at best and conveniently ignored the mysterious Palestinian delegation to the Berlin Games, as well as the Olympic values as a whole.

Q: What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?

A: None really sticks out in my mind. I’ve had to come to several important conclusions about life on my own, in many cases too late! Writings have been my preferred source for wise adages. Fredrick Douglas’ gift with the pen has meant something to me since my late teenage years. One of his quotations is particularly relevant in light of the history in The File: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Organized sport, when used prudently and appropriately, is a great pathway to building strong children.

Q: Especially with the current political climate, can you talk about the intersection of sports and politics and how it can be a good or a bad thing?

A: Unfortunately, people drag politics into sport all the time, and it’s almost always a bad thing. This happens not because the intention is always bad, but because sport offers a huge platform to communicate. No sport system is immune, not even in the US.

Despite this, many sport movements around the world actually originate in political movements. Certainly, this was the case with Jewish and Zionist sport, which justifiably mushroomed in tandem with the rise of the increasingly vitriolic anti-Semitism of Europe. This growth articulated a tangible and visual representation to Zionist yearnings for a national home for the Jewish people. But there is a great danger in arguing that such an intersection between sport and politics was somehow exclusively a Zionist phenomenon, and therefore, illegitimate. I address exactly why in The File.

The Olympic Charter stipulates the ideal way in which national Olympic movements and governments should approach one another. And while it is certainly the case that there is an intended diplomacy through Olympism, this diplomacy is not meant to reflect global politics; rather, it is specifically to carve out a space away from them.

This is where the history in The File and the present political climate surrounding the Middle East converge. In recent years, an aggressive push emerged to sanction, suspend, or expel Israeli sport organizations from international sport. This started outside the region, but, in 2015, Palestinian sport leadership took a strong stance against the Israel Football Association (IFA) within FIFA. The Palestine Football Association (PFA) wanted the IFA sanctioned, but the intent bore the hallmarks of an all-out political attack. It was a major move in direct contravention with the normative culture and statutes of sport. It also went against the POC’s commitment to the IOC, made in 1993 in Monaco, to adhere to the Olympic Charter—that is, to end its revolutionary activity in sport and join the Olympic family peacefully, after sixty years of struggle. Ultimately, the campaign against Israel led to the logical suspension of the president of the PFA for all football activity for one year. There could have been no favorable outcome for Palestine, and this case study represents a very bad intersection between politics and sport. Clearly, any political use of sport that ignores the very history of the matter in question should fail.

I know many people who were surprised by the FIFA decision, considering it just another case of “Zionist influence.” This cognitive dissonance exists because we, Palestinians and our supporters, don’t understand the history of The File. Unfortunately, much of our historiography focuses on what was done to us in the political realm, but it does not examine enough our cultural institutions or how we might have committed serious strategic errors—especially in the arcane domain of Mandate-era Olympic activity.

Considering the Nazi expulsion of Jews from sport, the Nazi Holocaust that wiped out many of Europe’s Jewish Olympians, the murder of Israeli Olympians by Palestinians in Munich, and the fact that we Palestinians have walked back on our 1993 commitments to the IOC, it should come as no surprise that the burden to prove trustworthiness in the realm of Olympism falls on the Palestinians, not the Israelis. Any call to boycott Israel that ignores these historical facts proves ulterior motives. Accepting Israeli athletes as legitimate actors in global sport does not mean giving the Israeli state carte blanche. (I state this because I anticipate the reaction in some quarters to the statement I just made about ulterior motives). It is about understanding that Israeli sport officials have done in the Olympic sphere what they have always said they would do, for at least one hundred years: represent Jewish athletes while not discriminating against non-Jews who want to compete under the Israeli sport governance structure.

It is true that the Olympic Movement intends to influence a positive outcome for the realm of politics, but it does not define itself as a political movement. Far from it. Actors in the Olympic Movement must align their values with Olympic values, which create a structure and conversation space in parallel to the political world between non-political actors, between those committed to the ideals of Olympism. There are many touchpoints between the political and Olympic worlds, but these occur primarily through international organizations like the UN.

Alignment of values means parking personal or national political ideologies at the door when entering the Olympic “space.” No one in the Olympic Movement ignores the fact that key actors in global sport come from political systems. But in the case of Israel, even the most ardent Zionist sport officials of the pre-Israel period committed in writing to uphold the Olympic regulations. They did then and continue to do so today. Unfortunately, the archival record is full of examples of Palestinian sport correspondences explicitly and repeatedly refusing in writing to cooperate with “the Jews” on national sport governance, even though we were competing every day on the field of play together. It was a double-faced policy that failed then and is failing again now because it is duplicitous. It’s that simple.

There is rarely a constructive political use of sport. The IOC, on a case-by-case basis, will give its blessing to specific initiatives within the framework of a Games (such as the joint Korean ice hockey team) and using its programmatic funding through Olympic Solidarity or the IOC president’s discretionary account. The intention is that such effort might bear fruit in the world outside of sport, affairs in which the IOC does not involve itself. But the IOC’s default approach is to adhere steadfastly to its Fundamental Principals of Olympism, which do lead to constructive outcomes over generations.

In the period of history discussed in The File, it is impossible to consider Orthodox Jewish or conservative Muslim women playing on the international sport stage in front of millions of viewers. But over time, the vision of Pierre de Coubertin (the founder of the modern Olympic Games) has brought even the most conservative elements of our shared global society into our living rooms. This is an amazing achievement.

Q: What is one thing that readers would be surprised to learn about you?

A: I wanted to be a radio DJ growing up. Sometimes I still wish that I had taken that path. I love all kinds of music and the joy that it brings to people across cultures and around the world. I think that it would be a wonderful opportunity to host a weekly sports radio and music show (or podcast) that addresses themes like that found in The File and connects these stories with the music of the cultures and periods in question. Sport and music are similar: they both unite people of completely different backgrounds in a moment that emphasizes our shared humanity.