The Sound of Silence

   In a few days the Summer Olympics will begin in London.  Shabbat and Tish’a B’Av will preclude my watching the always picturesque opening ceremonies and the beginning of the swimming events.  The Olympics are supposed to be apolitical, and indeed there is nothing like sport for bringing people of all nations and cultures together and actually creating peace.  But politics will intrude on these Olympics whether we like it or not.  This year is the fortieth anniversary of the Olympics at Munich, where eleven Israeli athletes, coaches and officials were murdered by Arab terrorists.  For a perspective from an American wrestler who was there, and whose son will be wrestling for the United States in London, click here.  Throughout these forty years, not once were these innocent people memorialized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at an Olympic Games.  No sense alienating the Arabs, Iranians and other terrorists and their apologists.

   Several days ago, Tablet Magazine published an article on the subject that is spot-on.  If the victims had been from any other country, there would have been ceremonies and memorials.  There is only one reason they will go unnoticed – they were Jewish and Israeli.  Jews are as expendable now as they were 70 years ago.  And Israel is as expendable as it was in May 1967, when the Arab armies were massing on the borders, the Strait of Tiran was blockaded, and the world did absolutely nothing.  And the Olympic committee is as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic now as when Avery Brundage, an open admirer of Hitler, was heading it up in 1972.

   I believe that the Israeli delegation ought to take matters into its own  hands.  They ought to march in the opening ceremonies with their heads held high and wearing black armbands, and when they are facing the reviewing stand and dignitaries, pull out signs bearing the names of the murdered men, hold them aloft and stand stock still for sixty seconds.  Maybe they will be sent home.  Maybe they will be arrested.  Whatever happens, they will have shown the dignity that the world would deny them.

   Oh, one more thing.  The British seem to have trouble with security.  Israel, the United States, and all freedom-loving countries likely to be targeted should bring plenty of their own security, undercover.  If the Israelis had done that forty years ago, the tragedy would probably not have taken place.

Moshe Weinberg

Yosef Gottfreund

Eliezer Halfin

Mark Slavin

Yosef Romano

Yaakov Shpringer

David Berger

Ze’ev Friedman

Kehat Shor

Andre Spitzer

Amitzur Shapira

    The world sowed the wind then.  It is reaping the whirlwind now.  Never forget.  Never let others forget.

ZAKHOR.    REMEMBER.