Iranian judo champion Arash Miresmaeili balked at taking on Israeli Ehud Vaks at the Olympics on Sunday. Are Jews that intimidating? I don't recall Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, or Pauly Shore ever frightening me. Of course, Jews--or Christians or Zoroastrians for that matter--don't really scare Arash Miresmaeili either. It's likely that the black-clad bearded dudes running his government scare him a great deal more, which is why he chickened-out of fighting Mr. Vaks. After all, what reaction might have awaited Miresmaeili in Tehran had he lost to his Israeli opponent?

"On behalf of all institutions and Iran's embassy in Greece, I congratulate you on your courageous move to refuse to compete with a judoka from the Zionist regime," Iran's ambassador to Greece declared after Miresmaeili's refusal to fight. "Certainly, the Iranian nation considers Miresmaeili as the real champion of the 2004 Olympic Games." Champion of what? Being an idiot? A coward? A political tool?

While this slight doesn't rank with what Miresmaeili's co-religionists did at the Munich games in 1972, it does demonstrate the anti-Semitism that various Muslim governments mandate in their populaces.

Update: The IOC is trying to get out of this one, rather than saying the Iranian is an anti-Semite, Jew-hating bastard, and expelling the Iranian judo team, that this guy was just overweight! I think I saw that on nytimes.com so it must be true!)

Dan, linking an athlete from an Islamic theocracy with an terrorist act commited over thirty years ago by terrorists who happended to be of the same faith is quite unfair. It seems to me that if the match would arouse too much passion in thier home nations, its better for it not to take place. Also, just to let you know the term "Semite" refers to those decsended from peoples speaking Semetic languages. Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semetic languages, therefore both Arabs and Jews are Semites. The term dates from a time when the Jews were the only Semites to have contact with Western culture.It was apt then, but is a misnomer in todays world where there are nearly as many Arab-Americans as there are Jewish Americans.Thus,most Muslim governments are not Anti-Semitic. They are either Anti-Isreali, or Anti-Jewish. Being Anti-Jewish I cannot defend. But the Muslim governments of the world have good reason to be Anti-Isreali. By the way. How is this different from America pulling out of the games in Moscow in 1980?

YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE

This would be like The Iron Sheik refusing to defend the WWF Intercontinental Title against the Junkyard Dog under threat of excommunication by "Ayatollah" Freddie Blassie. Warrror, what's your take?

BTW- Goldberg is jewish. I wouldn't want to face him an a dark ally.

One question: What good reason do muslim governments have to be anti-Israel?