(JTA) — The Israeli bobsled team’s historic journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics ended in anything but storybook fashion on Sunday, as Israel’s own Olympic committee withdrew it from competition after learning that the team had lied about a member’s health.

The withdrawal meant that Israel did not compete in the four-man race on Sunday, the final day of competition in Milan and Cortina.

After finishing the first two heats of the four-man bobsled race as the slowest team, Israel planned to swap out Uri Zisman for team alternate Ward Farwasy, who would have become Israel’s first-ever Druze Olympian had he taken the ice.

But bobsled substitutions are only permitted in the event of an athlete’s injury or illness, so Zisman had agreed to lie and tell officials he was sick. He had reportedly obtained a medical certification for the false story.

In a statement, Israel’s Olympic committee said it had learned of the team’s plan to substitute in Farwasy “in an improper manner that does not meet the standards expected of Olympic athletes and is not in line with Olympic values,” and chose to withdraw the team from the race.

“The Olympic Committee of Israel views any deviation from the Olympic values as unacceptable and cannot accept inappropriate behavior,” the statement said. “It should be emphasized that, up to this point, the participation of the bobsleigh delegation has taken place in the spirit of sport and without any violations by the athletes.”

David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, told the Times of Israel that he was “deeply disappointed in the actions of the team.”

AJ Edelman, the team’s captain and main driver of its existence, took responsibility for the scheme.

“I apologize profusely for the disappointment,” Edelman posted on X. “But I will always remain proud that the team looked at their Druze brother, who had earned his place on the team, and unanimously said ‘we want this for you.’ I signed off on it and I take responsibility.”

Later, fending off criticism that he had compromised the very Olympic program he had sought to build up, Edelman appeared to blame Zisman’s mother for calling foul on the switch and said he did not regret it.

“I make no apologies for the decision. At all. The switch is not only common in our sport, we did it believing it was good for the country and to honor our teammate. We thought we were putting country first,” he wrote. “The end effect was not intended but I am proud of the team’s consensus in that moment. It was only an issue because the mother of the athlete replaced was upset it was her child, not another athlete. The decision itself was not in question and I remain okay with it.”

The disqualification ignited criticism of the team from both pro-Israel sports fans and those who had protested Israel’s inclusion in the Olympics in the first place. Edelman and Menachem Chen’s last-place finish in the two-man bobsled event last week was overshadowed by a Swiss broadcaster’s criticism of Israel and Edelman during the race. The broadcaster later removed the clip from its website.

On Saturday, Italy’s public broadcaster apologized for a commentator’s off-camera remark calling to “avoid” the Israeli team. The network’s director issued an apology for what he said was an “unacceptable expression that in no way represents the values of public service broadcasting or of RAI Sport.”

The controversies came after the bobsled team’s apartment was broken into while it trained in the Czech Republic. Israel was competing in Olympic bobsled for the first time, in what Edelman and some fans dubbed “Shul Runnings,” a reference to the Jamaican bobsled team’s similarly improbable run in 1988.

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Senior Democrats who reviewed the party’s 2024 presidential election autopsy concluded that the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war was a “net negative” for Democrats and cost Vice President Kamala Harris critical support among younger and progressive voters, according to a new report published Sunday. The Democratic National Committee has so far withheld the findings from public release.

Activists affiliated with the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, a progressive research group, told Axios that in post-election discussions with DNC representatives, party officials acknowledged that the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza was a factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump.

The war loomed large in the campaign before Biden withdrew from the race. Anxious Democrats reportedly pressured former President Biden to “take a tougher stance on Israel” as one way to recover from his catastrophic debate performance in June 2024. Some advisers floated the idea of conditioning or halting certain arms transfers to shift the campaign’s direction and appeal to disaffected progressives and voters in Michigan — a swing state with a substantial Arab American community — who had cast “uncommitted” protest ballots in the primary.

Harris, who was more forceful in her call for an immediate ceasefire to address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, lost Michigan and Pennsylvania by almost 2 points.

“We should have done more as an administration,” Harris said in November. “We should have spoken publicly about our criticism” of how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government “were executing this war.”

The DNC claimed it has shared the internal findings with party leaders and candidates. Progressive activists are pushing for them to be made public ahead of the midterm elections.

Kamala Harris’ conclusions 

In her book about the election, titled 107 Days, Harris addressed what she described as the political fallout from Biden’s statements and her own stance on the war, writing that it hurt Democrats with key constituencies.

“The issue was not binary, but the outcome of this election certainly was,” Harris wrote, adding that she wished that those who protested her understood that “sitting out the election or voting for a third candidate would elect Trump and kill any effort for a just peace, any hope for a two-state solution.”

In her own defense, Harris wrote that she “wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance and history of the region, but it seemed very few people had the appetite for that or the willingness to hold two tragic narratives in their mind at the same time, to grieve for human suffering both Israeli and Palestinian.”

In her rushed vetting of running mates, Harris pushed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to apologize for criticizing pro-Palestinian campus protests, which he refused to do, according to his recent memoir.

Harris wrote that she discussed with Shapiro how his selection might affect the campaign, including the risk of protests tied to Gaza at the Democratic National Convention and “what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build.” She wrote that Shapiro responded by saying he had clarified that earlier views he held were misguided and that he was firmly committed to a two-state solution. Harris ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, but protests over Gaza still roiled the Democratic convention. Uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in outside the venue after the DNC declined to allow a Palestinian American to address the main stage.

The path forward

Palestinian rights have increasingly become a litmus test for Democrats.

Recent national polls show Democratic voters have as a group become more sympathetic to Palestinians. The IMEU Policy Project conducted a poll after the Democratic primary for New York City Mayor last year, which showed that Zohran Mamdani’s sharp criticism of Israel attracted new voters and energized parts of the Democratic electorate that contributed to his victory. The post-primary survey showed that 78% agreed with his belief that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and 79% support restricting weapons to Israel.

Last August, the Democratic National Committee withdrew a resolution reaffirming the party’s support for Israel and a two-state solution to avoid a clash with younger and progressive activists who were pressing sharper opposition to Israel.

In July, a record 27 Senate Democrats, a majority of the caucus, supported a pair of resolutions calling for the blocking of weapons transfers to Israel.

Even national Jewish Democrats, like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel — both considered possible presidential candidates in 2028 — have publicly challenged Israeli policy. Shapiro has repeatedly been critical of Netanyahu and, last year, criticized the Israeli government’s rejection of international reports on hunger  in Gaza, calling it “abhorrent” and “wrong.”

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(JTA) — BERLIN — They stood outside Berlin’s Babylon theater, bundled against the cold, laughing and dragging on cigarettes: the Cunio twins David and Eitan, and their younger brother Ariel.

David and Ariel were among the last Israeli hostages released in October from Hamas captivity, after 738 days. Their presence in Berlin — for a screening of a film about them, now recut with a redemptive ending — felt almost like an apparition. On the other side of two heavy glass doors were hundreds of theatergoers, people who had long waited for this moment.

The brothers and their extended family were in Berlin for a second premiere of Tom Shoval’s film “Letter to David.” The original film, shown in 2025 at the Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale, dove deep into the struggles of a family whose members had been abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. By then, six kidnapped members of the family, including three children, had been freed. But David and Ariel remained in captivity.

“Last year I was standing before the screening with a poster of David and Ariel. I was determined, every time I showed the film, to say that it’s an unfinished film,” Shoval told the sold-out audience at the theater in former East Berlin.

“And now I’m standing here. I have David in the audience, and I have Ariel in the audience,” he continued. “This is a precious, precious moment.”

The film “is a testament to love, hope and all the people who did not give up during the two years I was in captivity,” David Cunio said in Hebrew, standing on the stage with his extended family. “You gave me a voice when I could not be present. You were there for me.”

The film’s second showing came as tensions over the war in Gaza and Germany’s support for Israel roiled the Berlinale. After the jury’s president, director Wim Wenders, brushed off a journalist’s exhortation for the festival to take a stand against Israel, the Indian author Arundhati Roy announced she would not attend, and some 80 filmmakers and stars signed an open letter of protest.

Festival director Tricia Tuttle issued a statement saying that “artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival’s previous or current practices over which they have no control. Nor should they be expected to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.”

Journalists and filmmakers continued to raise the issue, even on the festival’s final weekend, when some award winners — including the Syrian-Palestinian director Abdullah Al-Khatib, who won best debut film — swatted back at the festival jury, criticizing what they see as Germany’s general support for Israel. Al-Khatib’s allegation that Germany has been “partners in the genocide in Gaza by Israel” prompted a German minister to walk out of the awards ceremony on Sunday.

Friday’s screening of “Letter to David” was by contrast a love fest, and the two police cars out front and uniformed officers circulating inside appeared to have little to do. The audience gave the entire family a standing ovation before the screening.

“I think this is a piece of history,” audience member Nirit Bialer, an Israeli who has lived for years in Berlin, said in an interview. “Just seeing the family, and just following the story about this family on the media, going to the Hostages Square in Israel every time I was there in the last two years: Wow, I’m speechless.”

The film’s original ending showed twins David and Eitan Cunio as actors, grappling with each other in an embrace that is both tender and violent, in a scene from Shoval’s feature film, “Youth,” screened at the Berlinale in 2013.

That ending now segues into a new conclusion, in which the reunited Cunio family embraces. They also view the film together, and Shoval captures their faces as the projector beams from behind.

Shoval said in an interview that he had not changed anything in the first part of the film. “I wanted to leave it as a time capsule, in a way, of how we perceived it back a year ago,” he said.

Though he had been invited to be with the family at their reunion, he chose not to, explaining, “I thought it’s a moment that belongs to them and not to me.”

But he spoke with David soon after he was released. And shortly afterward, he visited Sharon and David Cunio at their home. “I came in the morning and we sat until sunset together and we talked. Even when I’m thinking about it now, I’m getting emotional, because it was really…” He paused. “You’re waiting for a moment for this for so long.”

The Friday screening was not an official part of the Berlinale, but the beleaguered festival director Tuttle made a point of taking the stage herself. The film has been “finished in the way that Tom only hoped and dreamed and believed that he would be able to finish it,” she told the audience.

“We were horrified along with the world and all of you when David Cunio and many members of his family were abducted by Hamas,” she said. And on their release “we rejoiced with everyone as well.”

Saying that the new version was completed too late to be included in the festival schedule, Tuttle thanked two co-production companies that work closely with Israeli artists for backing Friday’s screening: the Israel-based Green Productions and the Berlin-based Future Narrative Fund.

Audience members seemed loath to leave the theater after the screening, lingering over what some described as mix of happiness and worry.

“The fact that David is able to see the movie makes us see the movie in a different way,” commented Konstantin, who had seen the original version last year. A young Jewish actor who lives in Berlin, he asked that his full name not be used, out of concerns about antisemitism.  “With the ending, it’s like a full circle, completed.”

Seeing the film again with the Cunio family present “was very uplifting and very happy,” said Berliner Julia Kopp, who also saw the film last year. “But at the same time, it’s not a happy ending … I also have a bit of a heavy heart,” worrying about “how life will go on for them.”

Both brothers have indicated that reentry into everyday life has been challenging after two years of captivity for them and two years of traumatized advocacy by their loved ones. And Ariel Cunio and his partner Arbel Yehud, who was held in captivity until January, have raised nearly $1.8 million since launching a crowdfunding campaign last week aimed at allowing them the time and space to “come back to life.”

A crowdfunding campaign launched on behalf of David and Sharon Cunio their twin daughters, also former hostages, says, “The family not only has to deal with the trauma that follows being held hostage and the events that transpired on October 7th, but also needs to rebuild their entire lives from scratch.”

Shoval said the film — and the screening — offered a vision for what a more settled future might look like.

“For me, the film is about the unification of the brotherhood, and what that means to be torn apart from each other, but also to get back,” Shoval said. “They can sit in the theater and they can see themselves. They can see what they missed, what happened. They can project about the past, about the present. This is a power of cinema, I feel. It felt natural for me to do that: to bring them back.”

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