Allowing U.S. athletes to carry a highly symbolic American flag during Friday night’s Opening Ceremony may go far to honor the heroes and victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but it also stirs ghosts that linger from the Olympics’ worst tragedy: the 1972 Munich massacres.
Attempts to honor the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches kidnapped and murdered by terrorists have all fallen short, the father of one of the slain athletes said Thursday. The families of those slain as well as prominent Israelis have long wanted a moment of silence specifically to honor only those victims.
They say Friday night’s plan to honor those who died in last year’s terrorist attacks is highly appropriate because victims represented nations from around the globe. But as the International Olympic Committee did an about-face to allow an official gesture, they could not help wonder: What about us?
“In every subsequent Olympics we asked for just a moment of silence,” said Benjamin Berger, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, whose son David was among those killed in Munich. “Not a great display, just a moment of silence, to acknowledge the thing that occurred. That’s all. Not a big deal. It’s never been granted.”
IOC Director General Francois Carrard declined to comment Thursday. It has been the contention of IOC leaders that they have repeatedly honored those killed in Munich. They point to a memorial service held the morning after the Sept. 5, 1972, attack and comments made during the Closing Ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, as well as IOC President Jacques Rogge’s remarks earlier this week during an IOC all-delegates session.
“I have no reservations about doing more in the future,” Rogge said. “I just want to say that we have honored the memory of these athletes.”
Both publicly and privately, according to confidential minutes reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the IOC has struggled to recognize this chapter in Olympic history. Its goal is to keep the Games focused on athletic endeavors and fostering goodwill among athletes.
That desire played a role this week when an IOC subcommittee rejected a proposal to have U.S. athletes carry a tattered flag recovered from the World Trade Center in Friday night’s Parade of Nations.
But the IOC was unprepared for the firestorm of controversy it unleashed with its decision, and it quickly retreated.
Efraim Zinger, director general of Israel’s national Olympic committee, said that despite the nearly 30 years separating the Munich murders and the Sept. 11 attacks, there is much in common.
“In one way, it’s two different events,” Zinger said. “In another it’s a chain in this series of never-ending terrorist events that started in 1972 Our feeling is the Olympic movement should acknowledge its family members.
“The Sept. 11 tragedy is something that changed the face of the world. But we are about the Olympic family, and it’s our continuous hope that the day will come that the Olympic family will acknowledge that members of its family were murdered.”
But Toni Khoury of Lebanon, elected this week to a term on the IOC’s executive board, said a moment of silence to honor the slain Israelis would be an unwelcome political intrusion:
“In my opinion, with all due respect for the Opening Ceremony and the Olympics, it is best not to interfere politically.”
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Alan Abrahamson is a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper.