Forty years is commonly understood to represent a generation. A new generation that knew not the airplane hijackings, the diplomat kidnappings, the wheelchair drownings and the Olympic killings of the Palestinian terrorists has arisen.
It is time to remind and to remember.
The Olympics, a celebration of the pure and the innocent — the non-commercial — unity of humanity was violated at its core by the “Black September” killings at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Forty years ago.
Around the world the request has gone out to the International Olympic Committee to honor the murdered Israeli athletes with one minute of silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in London next month.
One minute.
Not a 10-minute video.
Not a speech.
Not a ceremony.
Just one minute of silence.
The IOC refuses.
Who’s asking? Israel, of course. Jews, of course. But because the Olympics nurture the shared human spirit, many others are asking, too. The Canadian House of Commons, for example. Its request was passed unanimously.
Civil society groups and political leaders around the world have made the same request to the IOC.
The IOC refuses.
One finds it difficult to imagine that if the murdered athletes were of another nationality, the IOC would refuse. One cannot help but detect a whiff of anti-Semitism, here.
The IOC does send a representative to a purely Israeli memorial ceremony of what the IOC calls the 1972 “tragedy.”
As if the loss in 1972 were strictly that of one nation.
As if the target of the Palestinian killers in 1972 were not — besides Israelis — the Olympics itself.
As if the Olympics were not chosen by the terrorists for their vile deeds for the special shock value that a terrorist attack at the Olympics would provide.
As if it is only murdered Israelis, and not the Olympics itself, that deserve one minute of silence.
The IOC is wrong in calling the murders in Munich in 1972 a “tragedy.” Earthquakes are tragedies. Tsunamis are tragedies. Plane crashes are tragedies. The killing of the Israeli athletes at the Olympics was a deliberate act of policy; a willful commission of a crime; a volitional, voluntary, avoidable and perverse act, not a “tragedy.” After 40 years, it deserves more than a localized, nationalistic remembrance.
The International Olympic Committee is being obstinate, short-sighted, small-minded — unless it is motivated by anti-Semitism.
Which, of course, is the ultimate anti-Olympic value. Not that obstinacy, short-sighteness and small-mindedness fall far behind.
We hope the IOC comes to its senses.
It is not too late.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
