Sportscaster Bob Costas remembered the 11 Israelis killed in the 1972 Munich Olympics on air as the Israeli delegation entered the Olympic stadium in London.

“These games mark the 40th anniversary of the 1972 tragedy in Munich, when 11 Israeli coaches and athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists,” Costas said during NBC’s broadcast of the opening ceremonies last Friday.

“There have been calls from a number of quarters for the IOC to acknowledge that with a moment of silence at some point in tonight’s ceremony. The IOC denied that request, noting it had honored the victims on other occasions.”

Costas noted that International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge held a moment of silence in the Olympic Village earlier in the week.

“Still,” Costas said, “for many, tonight, with the world watching, is the true time and place to remember those who were lost, and how and why they died.”

After 12 seconds of on-air silence, Costas cut to a commercial.

(JTA)

For months, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has dismissed calls for a moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics to mark the 40th anniversary of the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

On Monday, in advance of this Friday’s opening ceremony, Mr. Rogge did preside over a previously unannounced tribute attended by several Olympic administrative officials.

But not only was this an insult to the memory of the slain Israelis, it underscored Mr. Rogge’s utter failure to grasp that the murders were not only about the Israeli victims but about the Olympics itself.

Since the days of ancient Greece, the Olympics have been characterized by a general truce that interrupted whatever wars were being fought at the time. This was to enable athletes and visitors to travel unimpeded to the games and ensure that the games themselves would be conducted free of violence. We don’t always have good things to say about UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but a statement he released last week put it best:

The tradition of an Olympic truce began in ancient times to allow safe passage for athletes traveling to the games. This resulted in an environment where the true spirit of the Olympic Games was on display: peaceful competition among nations, feats of individual excellence.

Today, sports and events such as the Olympic and Paralympic games break down barriers by bringing together people from all around the world and all walks of life. The participants may carry the flags of many nations, but they come together under the shared banner of equality and fair play, understanding and mutual respect.

We give meaning to these values through the Olympic truce, the call for warring parties everywhere to lay down their weapons during the games. These pauses in fighting save lives. They help humanitarian workers reach people in need. And they opened diplomatic space to negotiate lasting solutions.

The Olympic truce – and more broadly the Olympic ideal – carries a powerful message: that people and nations can set aside their differences and live and work together in harmony. And if they can do it for one day, over one event, they can do it forever. This is the dream on which the United Nations is built, and the goal of our daily work.

I call on all those engaged in hostilities to respect the Truce – which has been endorsed by all 193 UN member states. This is an uphill battle – but we must persist in proclaiming the Truce and do our utmost to win adherence to it. For these next few weeks may the torch of the Olympic and Paralympic games in London serve as a beacon of peace around the world.

Consider what happened in Munich on September 5, 1972, the 11th day of the Olympiad. At 4:30 a.m., several Palestinian terrorists made their way past security and, armed with hand grenades and Kalashnikovs, entered two Israeli team apartments. They killed two Israelis and took nine hostage. The hostages were later killed by the terrorists in the course of a failed rescue effort.

The massacre clearly struck at the essence of the Olympic concept. So why would Mr. Rogge and the IOC resist marking this enormous negation of it? There were various reasons given that revolved around the notion that the games are “apolitical” and that every effort is made to avoid “political issues” and embarrassing participating (i.e., Arab) states.

Political issues? Noting the cold-blooded murder of eleven human beings is a political statement? That only follows if the murders themselves were deemed political statements. Is that Mr. Rogge’s point after all?

In a sense this reminds us of the recent meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The secretary was pitching a resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and among other things was urging Mr. Netanyahu to meet PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s demand that Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails for terrorist acts committed prior to the Oslo Accords be released. The theory seems to be that before Oslo, the murder of Jews was properly viewed as an act of resistance by a freedom fighter. Post-Oslo, however, such a form of resistance was criminalized.

(((CLICK BELOW TO HEAR AUDIO)))

With the fortieth anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany rapidly approaching, Yishai presents a series of clips from “One Day in September”, a documentary made about the massacre and the events that led up to and resulted from the murder of Israeli athletes. Following the riveting clips, Yishai presents an interview with Ankie Spitzer, the widow of Andre Spitzer, one of the athletes that were murdered by Arab terrorists in Munich. Do not miss this segment!

Yishai Fleisher on Twitter: @YishaiFleisher
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Europe has temporarily forgotten its financial problems. This is the summer of sports. In June the European football (soccer) championships are being held in Poland and Ukraine. In July, there will be three weeks of the Tour de France, the world’s most famous cycling race. And by August, Europeans will be watching this year’s Summer Olympics in London.

As usual, however, the Olympics are tarnished by ugly politics. Forty years ago, the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich were marred by the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by the Palestinian terror group Black September. As the London Olympics are the tenth Olympic games since the Munich Olympics, relatives of the murdered Israeli athletes believe it would be appropriate if, during the ceremonies in London, a moment of silence were held for the eleven athletes massacred in Munich. Up till now the Olympic Games have never officially commemorated the murdered athletes with such a moment.

Normally, when an athlete dies, the International Olympic Committee honors him with a minute of silence. Two years ago, the 21-year old Georgian athlete, the luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge expressed his condolences on behalf of the entire Olympic community during his opening speech, while the Canadian and Olympic flags were flown at half-staff.

The same Jacques Rogge, a Count from Belgium, refuses to include such a moment of remembrance for the eleven murdered Israeli athletes, despite the fact that Rogge himself was present at the Munich Olympics as a member of the Belgian sailing team.

In 2004, Ankie Rekhess, a Dutch-born Israeli journalist and the widow of Andrei Spitzer, one of the athletes murdered in Munich, confronted Rogge during a press conference in Athens. “You yourself are an Olympic athlete,” she said. “Hence, you are a brother of the eleven murdered athletes. Why don’t you remember them in front of all other athletes? This concerns the entire Olympic family.” Rekhess received a standing ovation from the 300 people present in the room. However, in his reply, Rogge rejected the request, referring instead to friendship, sportivity and the necessity to keep politics out of sports.

For forty years, Ankie Rekhess has been working her way through the hierarchy of the Olympic Games, seeking to obtain a moment of silence for her husband and his colleagues. In 1996, she was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times after the rejection of her request for a similar moment during the Atlanta Olympics, the first one in which Palestine took part. “I don’t want to condemn anyone,” she said. “I simply want recognition for 11 athletes who came home in coffins 24 years ago.” Today, another 16 years later, Rekhess still has has not managed to persuade the Olympic Committee to honor those who were killed because they believed in the Olympic ideals.

After the Munich massacre in 1972, Rekhess saw the room where the athletes had been tortured and mutilated. “I saw pictures of what they had done to them and vowed no one would ever forget. That is why I want the moment of silence… to remember them all.”

In Simon Reeve’s 2001 book One Day in September, Ankie Rekhess recalls her husband’s idealism and attitude towards the Olympics: “[While strolling in the Olympic Village] he spotted members of the Lebanese team, and told [me] he was going to go and say hello to them… I said to him, ‘Are you out of your mind? They’re from Lebanon!’ Israel was at war with Lebanon at the time. ‘Ankie,’ Andre said calmly, ‘that’s exactly what the Olympics are all about. Here I can go to them, I can talk to them, I can ask them how they are. That is exactly what the Olympics are all about.’ So he went… towards this Lebanese team, and… asked them, ‘How were the results? I’m from Israel and how did it go?’ And to my amazement, I saw that the [Lebanese] responded and they shook hands with him and they talked to him and they asked him about his results. I’ll never forget, when he turned around and came back towards me with this huge smile on his face. ‘You see!’ said Andre excitedly. ‘This is what I was dreaming about. I knew it was going to happen!’”

A campaign by the widows of two Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre have had their petition for a memorial at the 2012 Olympic games rejected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Ankie Spitzer, widow of murdered Israeli wrestler Andre Spitzer, and Ilana Romano, widow of murdered weightlifter Joseph Romano, issued an appeal for a minute of silence at this year’s games, in memory of the violence which marred the Games 40 years ago.

Spitzer told Reuters that the IOC refusal is due to concern that Arab countries would publicly protest the memorial to the murder victims by walking out.  “They say we bring politics into the Olympics, which is not true, because I didn’t ask them to say that there were 11 Israelis,” Spitzer said.  “They tell us that the Arab delegations will get up and leave, to which I said: ‘It’s okay, if they don’t understand what the Olympics are all about, let them leave.’”

On September 5, 1972, Palestinian Black September terrorists stormed the Olympic Village in Munich, and killed 11 Israeli weightlifters, wrestlers, and coaches – two during the surprise attack on the Israeli dormitory, and 9 more in a failed hostage rescue attempt.