Unfortunately, the Olympic spirit that drove Andre Spitzer does not drive Count Rogge or the Olympic Committee. Rogge says that it is necessary to keep politics out of sports. The latter comment is all the more shocking, as the Israeli athletes, like all Olympic athletes, were attending an international meeting for sportsmen from all nations regardless of their countries’ politics. There was nothing political about the victims. They were murdered simply for being Israelis.
Rogge’s refusal to honor the murdered athletes has everything to do with politics. The International Olympic Committee obviously fears that a number of Islamic countries would refuse to attend the opening ceremony of the London Olympics if one minute of silence were observed for the eleven men assassinated in Munich forty years ago. Jacques Rogge treats their remembrance as political simply because they are Israeli; in doing so, the OIC President himself is breaking a basic rule of the Olympic Games.
And so ten years later, instead of being remembered and mourned, the Israeli athletes, who were killed for political reasons in a place which should have been a safe haven for them, are being shoved aside for political reasons by the very people who hypocritically claim to put sports and sportspeople before politics.
Originally published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org