Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Armenia Wins Gold; Israel Silver

Armenia placed first in the Chess Olympiad held in Dresden, Germany this past week, and Israel scooped up a silver medal, finishing one point behind the winner. While Armenia was favored to win the tournament, the Israeli team was not expected to perform this well.

8 comments:

Richard said...

Chess is the national pastime in Armenia. It has the third most grandmasters per capita after Iceland and Andorra with Israel close behind:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/spo_che_gra_percap-sports-chess-grandmasters-per-capita

Also the great Gary Kasparov had a Jewish father and an Armenian mother.

Richard said...

It turns out that the U.S.A., Georgia, and Slovakia all had Armenians on their teams:
http://www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=46981

Anonymous said...

Very cool.

Anonymous said...

"Dogs can enter, Jews and Armenians cannot." Protesters in Turkey. What are they protesting against, exactly? The inclusion of Armenians is strange if it's supposed to be an anti-Israeli rally, and the use of "Yahudiler" is insulting to the Turkish Jewish community.

http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalDetay&ArticleID=915950

English summary: http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/01/08/dogs-can-enter-jews-and-armenians-cannot-enter/comment-page-1/

Amos said...

Thanks for the links, Shiva. I just read about this a bit earlier today. I'm not sure how to explain the conflation other than a coalescence of hatred. I remember seeing a BBC survey a year or more ago, which showed that a large percentage of Turks believe Armenians practice the Jewish religion.

Taline said...

Shiva and Amos,

I had heard about that as well, actually I am coming back from Yerevan, and people there were talking about this. I have no other explanation to offer than Amos' however.
Taline

Richard said...

Hey guys,

You're falling down on the job here. There's lots happening which should concern this blog.

Take this for example:
http://istanbulcalling.blogspot.com/2009/02/online-conversion-of-david-ignatius.html

Amos said...

R,

We're sorry, life and work are interfering with blogging as usual. Thanks a lot for that link. It seems to me that it is more of the sort of thing that Shiva left a link to. So, what do we learn from this, other than that quite a few Turks equate Jews and Armenians, and seem to regard these categories of people with a paranoid hatred?