After Half a Century, Israeli Victims of Munich Olympic Massacre Honored at Tokyo Opening Ceremony
Families of the victims: “Finally there is justice for the husbands, sons and fathers murdered at Munich.”
Almost five decades after the terror attack at the Munich Olympics, the murdered Israeli athletes were finally remembered during the opening ceremony of the games in Tokyo. On Friday, a moment of silence was observed during the event to honor of the eleven members of the Israeli team who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1972.
The “Munich Massacre,” as it is remembered in history, began when eight gunmen of the Black September Palestinian terrorist group broke into the Olympic Village in Munich and took members of the Israeli team hostage. Their murderous intentions became clear at the onset of the attack when they killed two athletes who attempted to resist. Following a failed rescue attempt by the German authorities, nine remaining Israeli players and coaches were killed.
The news agency Reuters reported the Friday’s remembrance ceremony held in Tokyo:
Israeli Olympic team members killed by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics were remembered during the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony on Friday with a moment of silence, the first time in 49 years.
The move was welcomed by relatives of the victims, some of whom were in the stadium, and Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
“I welcome this important and historic moment. May their memory be blessed,” Bennett wrote on Twitter.
The families of the 11 killed had long asked the International Olympic Committee to hold a minute’s silence at a Games opening ceremony but had been turned down for almost half a century. “
We, the Olympic community, also remember all the Olympians and members of our community who have so sadly left us, in particular we remember those who lost their lives during the Olympic Games,” said an announcer during the opening ceremony.
“One group still holds a strong place in all our memories and stand for all those we have lost at the games – the members of the Israeli delegation at the Olympic Games Munich 1972,” the announcer added as the stadium darkened and a soft blue light illuminated parts of the arena.
The commemoration came after years of campaign by the families of the victims to have their memories honored at the Olympic games.
They often faced hostility from the Olympic officials. “The International Olympic Committee had repeatedly turned down requests to hold a moment of silence to remember the massacre despite pleas from the victims’ families and Jewish organizations. In 2012, then-IOC President Jacques Rogge even called the idea of honoring them “inappropriate”,” The New York Daily News noted.
The Times of Israel reported their reaction of the bereaved family members:
Families of the Munich victims have campaigned for years for greater public recognition for the dead from the International Olympic Committee. The IOC faced criticism for refusing to hold a moment of silence for the Israeli victims during the opening of the 2012 London Games, 40 years after the attack.
Widows Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano were at Friday’s ceremony.
“Finally there is justice for the husbands, sons and fathers murdered at Munich,” the two said in a joint statement. “We went through 49 years of struggle and never gave up. [We] cannot hold back our tears. This is the moment we’ve waited for.”
The Regressive Left and the Legacy of the Munich Massacre
The harrowing details of the massacre came to light in 2015, when The New York Times reported that one of the athletes was castrated, abused and left do die, while others were mercilessly tortured before being killed by the terrorists.
Germany’s ruling left-wing Social Democratic government was far too soft on the Palestinian terrorists. Three of the surviving Black September terrorists were released by Berlin in exchange for a hijacked Lufthansa flight later that year. They were flown to Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi’s regime welcomed as “heroes of the Munich operation.”
The Black September gunmen, who planned the terrorist attack in close coordination with left-wing West German terrorist groups, demanded the release of the notorious German terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction (RAF). Their demands included the release of 200 convicted Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.
While the world took almost half a century to remember the Israeli victims, the perpetrators of the Munich massacre continue to be celebrated by the Left. In 2017, British newspapers released pictures of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn laying a wreath at the graves of the Black September terrorists Tunisia.
Rasmea Odeh, who was on the list of convicted terrorists Black September wanted released, has become a ‘feminist’ icon for the American Left. Linda Sarsour sees the Black September’s darling Odeh as her role model.
Odeh earned this admiration for her role in the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket, which killed university students Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.
The fact that Odeh was deported from the U.S. for committing immigration fraud by hiding her terrorist past, only adds to her stature for the deranged Left.
In April 2017, The New York Post reported Sarsour’s adoration for Odeh:
The Brooklyn-born Sarsour, daughter of Palestinian immigrants, shared the dais Sunday with another darling of the feminist “resistance,” Rasmea Odeh — convicted in Israel of killing two Hebrew University students in a 1969 terrorist attack and of planning an attack on the British Consulate. After her release, Odeh was able to immigrate to the United States by hiding her crime. She’s now being deported to Jordan.
Odeh has become a leftist hero. Sunday night, she and Sarsour embraced, and Sarsour gushed to the audience about feeling “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”
The behavior of leftist icons like Sarsour and Corbyn is very revealing. Driven by the hatred of Israel in particular and of Western civilization in general, the Left continues to champion these and other Palestinian terrorists as they wage one terrorist operation against the Jewish State after another.
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Mr. Uniyal, I respect all your work, including your posts at Legal Insurrection.
“There is no love lost for these terrorists among the Leftists in the U.S. either.”
I may be wrong, of course, but I believe you are using this idiom incorrectly.
Fixed, thanks!
Thank you very much for the kind correction. I really appreciate your comments and feedback.
If the Olympics survive, this should be part of EVERY Games. Participation should not include death, especially for a political end, and these athletes sacrificed more than ANY gold medalist or any team.
Used to love the Olympics…don’t plan on watching a single minute of it. From how it seems to me the US doesn’t even have a team representing it….it has spoiled brats who hate their own country. I look forward to them all coming home empty handed. There MAY be some who aren’t total woketurds…but their silence about their teammates speaks volumes.
The Olympics are no longer worth watching. The spectacle created by the US women’s soccer team kneeling in support of “social justice” was enough to make me vomit. The left has co-opted the games, especially the female sports, as a symbol of their support for the lesbians who are the dominant participants. Then the IOC spits in their face by allowing so-called transgender athletes, which are really guys who couldn’t hack it in men’s sports, to participate with the women. The irony of Rampoe and her bunch squawking about social justice while their own governing body bows down to the freak show that some women’s sports have become is delicious. Being hoisted on their “woke” petard is what they deserve.
The only difference between the Palestinian gunmen of 1972 and Palestinian gunmen of today is that they have newer guns. The hatred that caused the massacre is still there. Nothing has changed. There is nothing to celebrate.
The only way this will change, will be when punishment is so severe that they are no longer willing to risk it. Tit for tat responses will not fix what is wrong.
I guess guys competing in women’s sports took precedent all this time.
Everybody’s taking a knee at sporting events these days.
The book, “Vengeance”, about the Israeli mission to take out the perpetrators of the massacre, and Spielberg’s movie version of it are apparently fraudulent. The book, “Striking Back” is reportedly much better.
JRR Tolkien’s book, “The Silmarillion” is a valuable, but very difficult to read, warning about the pitfalls of revenge.
“Munich” was a massive distortion of the book “Vengeance” and the author refused to have anything to do with the film.
And, fifty years later, the utterly vile, useful-idiot, Islamic supremacist/terrorist apologists in the Dhimmi-crat Party and among European Leftists are still whitewashing/rationalizing/excusing/enabling Islam’s innumerable and intrinsic pathologies; are still gullibly swallowing, parroting and promoting contrived and fallacious propaganda mythologies of alleged Arab Muslim victimhood; and, are still making common cause with Muslim Jew-haters around the globe.
I can remember the entire terrible event. The incident was handled poorly by then West Germany. The vicious deeds of the Black September Palestinians were never properly punished. And, astonishingly, the Olympic Games continued, even after Jim McKay soberly announced, “They’re all gone.” Awful decision, I believe. It was an awful reminder of the evil in this world. We must always remember those brave Israelis and fight antisemitism and hate wherever we see it.
One person not mentioned in the post was the person in charge of raising the funds for the attack, Mahmoud Abbas, current “President” of the palestinian authority.