This year will mark the 40th anniversary the Olympics’ darkest day, and one of the darkest in the history of the struggle against terrorism: the massacre of Israeli athletes at the hands of Palestinian terrorists in Munich in 1972. But, true to form, the International Olympic Committe “flatly rejected a minute of silence at today’s opening ceremony in London to mark” the event.
Why?:
According to Ankie Spitzer, the widow of Israeli fencing coach Andre Spitzer, who was murdered by the Palestinian Black September group in 1972, IOC president Jacques Rogge capitulated to the 46-member bloc of Arab and Muslim countries because of the threat of Arab countries to boycott participation in the Games.
Spitzer, who jumpstarted an international campaign to garner a minute of silence at the London games, reported that Rogge told her that “his hands were tied” by the influence of the 46-member group.
Her rejoinder to Rogge: “No, my husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”
Whatever the reason for his refusal to honor the dead this year, Rogge’s decision is consistent with the IOC’s previous attitude. The group was criticized 40 years ago for its tepid response, including its refusal to cancel the remainder of the games (a decision which, by the way, the Israeli government supported at the time):
In the wake of the hostage-taking, competition was suspended for the first time in modern Olympic history. On 6 September, a memorial service attended by 80,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. IOC President Avery Brundage made little reference to the murdered athletes during a speech praising the strength of the Olympic movement and equating the attack on the Israeli sportsmen with the recent arguments about encroaching professionalism and disallowing Rhodesia’s participation in the Games, which outraged many listeners…
Many of the 80,000 people who filled the Olympic Stadium for West Germany’s football match with Hungary carried noisemakers and waved flags, but when several spectators unfurled a banner reading “17 dead, already forgotten?” security officers removed the sign and expelled those responsible from the grounds. During the memorial service, the Olympic Flag was flown at half-staff, along with the flags of most of the other competing nations at the request of Willy Brandt. Ten Arab nations objected to their flags being lowered to honor murdered Israelis; their flags were restored to the tops of their flagpoles almost immediately…
The families of some victims have asked the IOC to establish a permanent memorial to the athletes. The IOC has declined, saying that to introduce a specific reference to the victims could “alienate other members of the Olympic community,” according to the BBC. Alex Gilady, an Israeli IOC official, told the BBC: “We must consider what this could do to other members of the delegations that are hostile to Israel.”
But all of that is secondary to the 1972 event itself. If you’re not familiar with it, a simple way to learn the main facts is to watch the powerful award-winning documentary “One Day in September.” Those of you who were around in 1972 can relive the horror, including some facts you’ve probably forgotten; those who were not can familiarize themselves with a day that put Palestinian terrorism on the Olympic map.
And not just the Olympic map, either; despite initial outrage, the world seemed to sympathize with the terrorists much more than the victims:
…Munich was one of the most successful attacks in terrorist history. As Bruce Hoffman, a leading authority on terrorism points out, “The premier example of terrorism’s power to rocket a cause from obscurity to renown…was without doubt the murder of eleven Israeli athletes seized by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games…
Most of the world had forgotten the Palestinians existed before the attack at Munich. Within two years of the massacre…Yassar Arafat was being feted by world leaders and invited to address the General Assembly of the United Nations…
“One Day in September” is available at YouTube in its entirety. It is a very disturbing film. Its subject matter is, of course, a vile and audacious act of murderous terrorism by a group that’s since become the darling of the Western world. But it’s also difficult and immensely frustrating to relive the incident step by step as an observer; one wants to reach out and change history. The film also (in my opinion) is too graphic in some of its photos of the victims; we don’t need those to understand the heinousness of the perpetrators’ acts. But I recommend that you watch it. You will be outraged all over again, not only at the perpetrators themselves, but at the mind-bogglingly inept bungling of the German authorities—and then at how history and public opinion has played out.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
July 27th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
http://neoneocon.com/2012/07/25/time-and-the-olympics-marches-on-comaneci-is-50/#comment-389125
http://neoneocon.com/2012/07/25/time-and-the-olympics-marches-on-comaneci-is-50/#comment-389141
The Arafat I Knew
He hasn’t changed since his days as a KGB-backed terrorist.
http://www.netanyahu.org/arafatiknew.html
On the poisoning of Arafat…
and
Egyptian magazine confirms Arafat was behind Munich Olympic and other murders
http://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/34973/egyptian-magazine-confirms-arafat-was-behind-munich-olympic-and-other-murders/tom-g
Yasser Arafat personally directed the Black September terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for the 1971 murder of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi at-Tal, the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and other atrocities. The Cairo newspaper quotes a new book by PLO leader Marwan Kanafani, “Years of Hope,” to be published soon.
the sympathies your commenting on are directed from moscow… if moscow is assisting, helping, directing, or in play, then their western counterparts work towards the same goal…
one cant discuss the issue if one doesnt know as much of the facts as possible, or if their facts are wrong. if so, then what they are discussing has no real bearing or connection with the actuality in the real world
it also helps to see what information has been created so that people can shop for the message they want, and so be divided by fantasy rather than united in reality
just go to world news…
Neo-Nazis ‘helped to carry out Munich Olympics massacre’
http://article.wn.com/view/2012/06/18/NeoNazis_helped_to_carry_out_Munich_Olympics_massacre/
which leads to
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/neonazis-helped-to-carry-out-munich-olympics-massacre-7857360.html
[edited for length by n-n]
July 27th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
I have had it with moments of silence, pastel ribbons, and monuments to the murdered. If you would honor the dead then do so by identifying the culprits – Islam and the OIC.
Most every Islamic country – and Islam itself – is, every second of every day, manifestly in violation of a host of the UN’s Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Articles.
Article 5 (inhuman punishment – beheadings, stoning, et al)
Article 7 (equality under the law – muslim women, infidels)
Article 16 (men and women equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.)
Article 18 (Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19 (Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.)
And the kicker
Article 30 (Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Until such time as the OIC Islamic countries and Islam comply with the UN Articles, within their own borders and religion, de facto and de jure, they should be expelled from the UN. But then, every Western nation is as fundamentally corrupt, and frightened, as Islam is unconscionable.
Our continued association with the UN does not speak well of us but says volumes about our willingness, along with the rest of the West, to invoke righteousness and simultaneously, in confronting Islam, timorously disregard it. We have not dishonored the murdered by not giving them a minute of silence; we have dishonored the murdered by countenancing Islam generally and the OIC specifically.
July 27th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Ten Arab nations objected to their flags being lowered to honor murdered Israelis; their flags were restored to the tops of their flagpoles almost immediately…
This is exactly why I can never be an elected leader of any country.
I would have cut those flags down, and incinerated them in the Olympic flame myself, and then told those countries they can recall their representatives and proceed to pound sand.
July 27th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
There are groups which gain coveted AVG (accredited victim group) status through being perpetually picked on. There are groups which achieve the category by being threatening. NBPP, for example.
Muslims have both. They are perpetually picked on and they’ll kill you if they dislike something about you.
So you can’t say anything about not wanting to be killed without being accused of picking on the picked-on. A first, as far as I know.
July 27th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/208820/ed87e8fce0/341001277/b1831f61b4/
July 27th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
The OIC is an especially in-bred and closed-minded group, and they wear blinders.
July 28th, 2012 at 12:28 am
George Pal: “Until such time as the OIC Islamic countries and Islam comply with the UN Articles, within their own borders and religion, de facto and de jure, they should be expelled from the UN. But then, every Western nation is as fundamentally corrupt, and frightened, as Islam is unconscionable.”
Correct. But you have to wonder why the West has kow-towed to the Islamic countries all these years. They are no real military threat. It has primarily been our need for oil throughout the developed world and the fact that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq are awash in the stuff. That’s one reason why it is so unconscionable that the enviros have worked so hard to lock our resources away. Reasonably priced, secure energy is the life blood of a modern economy. Our national security and future well being depends on going after our oil reserves so that at last, at long blody last, we no longer need take so much note of the Islamic OPEC mafia.
July 28th, 2012 at 8:50 am
J.J. formerly Jimmy J. Says:
“That’s one reason why it is so unconscionable that the enviros have worked so hard to lock our resources away.”
You’re right. Even absent the issue of energy dependence on MidEast oil that turns to petrodollars that finance the worldwide expansion of Islam and its fantasies of a caliphate, a nation that will not use its natural resources is a defunct nation. This is one of the great issues I have with the GOP, that they allowed, even participated (out of fear, not concern) in this. Romney and the GOP plank in the platform should state it is their intention to drill or frack anything that even looks like it contains oil or gas – including Roseanne Barr and Michael Moore.
July 30th, 2012 at 2:16 am
We have not dishonored the murdered by not giving them a minute of silence; we have dishonored the murdered by countenancing Islam generally and the OIC specifically.
Ah, but we can’t dishonor the dead — we only soil our own honor by such actions.
Anyone else notice the creeping Leftist culture of malignant envy in the new gymnastics rules? Only 2 competitors from any one nation, regardless of the individual scores, may compete in the all-around final. So America’s Jordan Wieber, who came in fourth out of all the girls in the competition in the prelims, has been barred from competing for the gold medal because two of her teammates also qualified.
Jordan is the current world champion. 20 other girls with lower scores WILL be allowed to compete.
She was in tears, crushed: the work of her life destroyed. Why? well, for Envy’s sake. The Envy that the Left hones to a keen edge, for any excellence they can’t attain on their own merits.
July 30th, 2012 at 2:18 am
Also, check this out re the opening ceremony. A review from the Rant Political guy:
“At one point, my astonishment at the sheer magnitude of the train wreck had the effect of having my eyes taped open at the horror of horrors, making me feel like the serial rapist from Clockwork Orange. I wouldn’t have been shocked if a monstrous statue of Joseph Stalin was unveiled at the end whose head birthed a hydra and ate the audience….”
http://rantpolitical.com/2012/07/28/an-olympic-nightmare/#comment-27
July 30th, 2012 at 11:09 am
Let the 46 arab nations boycot. By my count that may be less than what 100 total and 95% of that 100 would be soccer players.