It only took 44 years but, finally, the International Olympic Committee has held a moment of silence for the 11 Israeli athletes brutally slain by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich games in 1972.
The Olympic Games, despite its projected message of brotherhood and friendly competition, doesn’t have a great history on either of those fronts.
Competition: There are the doping scandals that, to be fair, plague all sports today. The doping also points to the fact that the Olympics, since the 1990s, are no longer about amateur athletes, but about professionals trying to stand out in the cutthroat world of modern sports. So now, in addition to the Tour de France, World Cup in soccer, diving, swimming, downhill skiing, the NBA championships, the NHL championships (and a World Cup in hockey) — the list goes on — we can watch these same athletes in the Olympics. Yes, there are still up-and-coming athletes that break out at the Olympics, like Missy Franklin four years ago. On the whole, however, the Games’ names are familiar.
But let’s move off the sports and onto the history. The internationalism of the Olympics is to be lauded — if it were not so darn theoretical. It’s hard to buy the Olympic spirit when taking into account two specific Games. The first, Munich, 1972. Eleven Israeli athletes were brutally slain by Palestinian terrorists and, yet, the Games must go on. Who? What? Why? The Games are more important than human life? The very Games whose ethos of international brotherhood was viciously violated by terrorists who had no interest in coexistence, internationalism or brotherhood?
The most reprehensible part was the reaction — or lack thereof — of the IOC. For years, the victims’ families, the State of Israel, Jews worldwide and decent human beings begged the IOC to hold a moment of silence for the slain athletes. They refused. Finally, 44 years later, they did the right thing.
Let’s go back further, to the 1936 Olympics, where Adolf Hitler was permitted by the IOC to stage an exaltation to Nazism — and staged it was, as anyone who has seen the Leni Riefenstahl film “Olympia” can attest. It was a propaganda effort for the ages — and the IOC’s Avery Brundage encouraged it. Despite its early protestations against the exclusion of certain groups from the Games, the IOC failed to acknowledge Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.
Back to the present. Just last week at Rio, a Lebanese delegation refused to ride with Israeli athletes. The head of the delegation was praised back home in Lebanon as a hero, JTA reports. In another incident at Rio, a Saudi judoka forfeited rather than face an Israeli opponent.
Internationalism? Brotherhood?
Don’t get us wrong. We still take pleasure in the Olympics. In rooting for Team USA and all the Israeli and Jewish athletes. But the idea that the Olympics are better or more important than any other sports competition — we’re not buying it.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
