What’s the harm? The Olympics is about competition among the best of a people defined by national borders. This sort of atheltic competition has an innocence to it. I think its purpose is to see that all nations can compete and live together. Politics has no place in it. Further, loving your country and wanting to compete for it does not mean you are a representative of the nation’s policies. From that perspective, any athlete who suffers in the name of inserting politics into the Olympics should be remembered for their sacrifice, but only in the confines of the Olympics.
I can’t imagine how awful it must have felt to be denied the chance to compete because the nation you happened to be born into has brutal policies. Far more unimaginable still is the suffering the Israeli athletes went through to compete for their country.
A “private” moment of silence? It was at the Olympic Truce ceremony, in front of the world’s press and most of the Olympic delegations. It was about as private as the front row of a concert.
Nothing. Which is why they had one.
A Palestinian says it’s an Israeli/Palestinian thing. No shit. Mr. Rajoub probably thinks the sun rises in the east to make a political statement about Palestine. Let me know when he’s chairman of the IOC.
No, but you’re making unsupported assertions. Let’s see some evidence that they were rejected.
I fail to see the distinction between people who were kidnapped and murdered because they were at the Olympics and people who were kidnapped and murdered because of the Olympics.
Well, since their reasons are so coherent and well thought out, your question has presumably been answered and the thread can be closed.
Well, “harm” is a bit of a strong word, but the opening ceremony is supposed to be a happy event. I take it we are all in agreement that a memorial to the dead is unlikely to be happy.
My problem is with the reason for the refusal rather than the refusal itself. When a nation’s - any nation’s - entire Olympic team is murdered at the Olympics there really aren’t sides to take.
After saying there would be no moment of silence to honor the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches who were killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the IOC permitted a video tribute to the 52 people who were killed in the suicide bombings in the London transit system the day after the city won the Games in 2005.
Not only is it disgusting and reprehensible, but making them doesn’t make you look good.
Bullshit.
As was pointed out, there were moments of silence for a number of people, but none for the Jewish athletes murdered for being Jews.
Er… the President of the IOC publicly rejected them.
For your sake, I hope you’ve never ridiculed people who believed the Holocaust was a hoax or that global warming was a fraud.
If you have then you just made yourself look extremely stupid.
I didn’t say their reasons were “well thought out” I said they were more coherent and well thought out than yours.
Sorry for not being more clear. I thought what I was saying was obvious, but apparently some missed the point I was making.
What are you talking about?
I’m not being rude or disrespectful, but I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.
For the record, if at the 1972 Olympics a number of Romani athletes were murdered by bigots who thought of the Romani as vermin I would get upset at the idea of a memorial being held for them forty years later, but apparently you do.
I was at a Shabbat dinner tonight for young adults. Earlier, I had suggested we have a moment of silence and to my surprise, the leaders did that. There were about 100 of us in attendance. I know other synagogues in Denver did the same thing…as did shuls and dinner tables across the country/world. There was a huge Minute for Munich in London yesterday.
So while the IOC snubbed the Israeli widows (again), thanks to media, it ended up being a much bigger thing than in years past…I think they won this PR war. The fact that the IOC had two moments of silence for others will only make the story go on longer.
The point was well served. More people know about the Munich massacre and care now than they did four years ago.
Because there are a total of three memorial events. A blatant snub would have had zero.
I tend to agree, and said as much in my first post.
Eh… I don’t think it’s so much the identities of the victims as much as it is just trying to avoid predictably inflaming tensions.
Probably. But an equivalent conflict (including Olympic massacre) between two peoples doesn’t currently exist. I could try to draw some hypothetical parallel between Turkey and Armenians, but it still wouldn’t be quite the same.
Like I said, I don’t like it either, but I can understand it. Pulling off an Olympics with a spirit of cooperation, minimal controversy, and no incidents of violence is their priority. That some perhaps unfortunate compromises have to be struck in order to make that happen should come as a surprise to no one.
I too wasn’t aware that this happened. So, of course, I turned to Wiki.
[QUOTE=Wiki]
Sydney 2000
In accordance with the Olympic Charter which governs the Closing Ceremony, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch called on the youth of the world to assemble in Sydney, in four years, for the next Summer Olympics. In his speech, he denounced the Centennial Olympic Park bombing stating that terrorism cannot stop the Olympic spirit. Samaranch asked for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the bombing, as well as the 11 Israeli athletes of the Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics. He said that those tragedies will never be forgotten and said: No act of terrorism has ever destroyed the Olympic movement and none ever will. More than ever we are fully committed to building a better, more peaceful world in which forms of terrorism are eradicated.
[/quote]
. If the situation that led to the attack had changed in these last 40 years, the world would be more sympathetic to such requests. Instead we’ve had 40 more years of continued ethnic cleansing and the most brutal occupation since World War II.
These calls for a “moment of silence” are nothing but an attempt by Israel and its supporters to increase both international support for its policies in occupied Palestine and to demonize the Palestinian people and label them “terrorist”, connecting them with events that happened before many were even born. This effort to demonize Palestinians is why Jibril Rajoub calls this effort “racist”. It is yet another way for the Israelis to define not just Palestinians, but all Arabs, as “other” and drive them from their homes. It is one more justification for so-called “Jewish settlements”, each of which amounts to a tiny invasion…a land grab to be added to some future hypothetical Israel with permanent borders. Or as Bibi Netanyahu calls it, “creating facts on the ground”.
I am against any “moment of silence” for specific acts by specific people against specific targets. I would support a moment of silence for all victims of terrorism and war, including, for example, the victims of the violent and homicidal IDF boarding of the MV Mavi Marmara just two years ago. Their names:
Ibrahim Bilgen
Ali HaydarBengi
Cevdet Kiliçlar
Çetin Topçuoglu
Necdet Yildirim
Fahri Yaldiz
Cengiz Songür
Cengiz Akyüz
Furkan Dogan
Terror has no religion.
“A symbol for all that is great and noble in mankind,” not a venue for whining, or opening old wounds, or expressing one’s views. Win an Oscar and you can talk all you want.
I don’t agree that opposition to the murder of innocents by terrorists is a less important value than the decision on where to build an Islamic center.
Yes there has already been a moment of silence for the Munich athletes at the closing ceremony at Atlanta. I don’t have any major objection to a second moment of silence but I don’t think there is any urgent need either. It seems a non-issue either way.
The venom coming from some of those who want the moment of silence isn’t pretty though.
In the interests of accuracy they weren’t shown because there was no “moment of silence” at any point in ceremony. There were three points in the show (designed and produced by Danny Boyle - not the IOC) where there was reference to remembrance. In the first one the music slowed and became sombre to commemorate the dead of both world wars “and other conflicts”, later there was a video piece with music and pictures of friends and relatives of the audience who had died (ticket holders were invited to bring along photos), and finally a dance piece called “Mortality” by Akram Khan accompanied by Emeli Sandé singing Abide With Me. The last piece was linked to the 7/7 London bombings by the TV commentators but I don’t think Danny Boyle or Akram Khan did.
So no moment of silence, just solemn passages in the general upbeat show.
I don’t understand - you seem to be saying that the athletes who were murdered were not innocent. How did going to the Olympics make them guilty of something? Or is it just because they are Jewish?