Egyptian judoka refuses to shake Israeli opponent’s hand

Egyptian Judo fighter Islam El Shehaby pulled a major taboo in the Rio Olympics by refusing to shake hands with Israel’s Or Sasson, Mashable reports.

Sasson qualified for the consolation round after losing the semifinal against France’s Teddy Riner.

The crowd booed as El Shehaby backed away from Sasson’s extended hand, underscoring the neighboring countries’ strained relations 37 years after signing a peace agreement. “But for personal reasons, you can’t ask me to shake the hand of anyone from this State, especially in front of the whole world”, he said.

“Sometimes over the course of such tournaments such things happen, but in general the idea of the Olympics is to build bridges between countries and nations, not destroy them”, the International Olympic Committee added. (Video here.) According to Deadspin, El Shehaby is known to have anti-Israel views and had considered not even fighting.

The International Judo Federation called it a sign a progress that the bout even took place between the two athletes.

“This is already a big improvement that Arabic countries accept to [fight] Israel”, spokesman Nicolas Messner said in an email.

The incident did not go over well in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu’s spokesman Ofir Gendelman described it as “shocking” in a tweet.

This is not the first time Arab Olympians in Rio have stirred controversy with their behavior toward Israeli athletes. The next year, Darwish again declined to shake hands with Zeevi after beating the Israeli in their quarterfinal match at a tournament in Dusseldorf.

On Thursday, Mataz Matar, a TV host in Al-Sharq Islamist-leaning network urged el-Shehaby to withdraw.

“My son, watch out”.

In the interview, El Shehaby claimed that he doesn’t mix politics and sports and for that reason, he made a decision to compete in the fight and not forfeit as many Egyptians had requested from him. However, he had come under pressure…

“Things happen in the heat of the moment that are not acceptable and obviously we would remind all competitors of Olympic values”.