Jeff Barak: The Right Way to Remember Munich 11
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Monday's ceremony in London commemorating the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games 40 years ago is the correct way to honor their memory. A minute’s silence at last week’s opening ceremony would not only have been out of place at such a joyous event, it also would have risked turning the horror of these athletes’ deaths into a barren political ping-pong over the rights and wrongs of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
An immediate example of such sterile debate was Jibril Rajoub’s shameful letter to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, in which the Palestinian Olympic official thanked Rogge for not holding the minute’s silence, stating that having done so would have promoted the “spread of racism.”
In writing this letter, Rajoub placed a new hurdle on the track towards possible Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
There can be no defense of the events of 40 years ago. But while one can understand, and deeply sympathize with the feelings of the widows of the slain Israeli athletes, it was naive to expect that the organizers of the Olympic Games would suddenly agree to hold a memorial for the murdered Israelis after having failed to do so at previous Games...