BICOM

A commemoration ceremony was held in Rio to remember the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

The event took place at Rio de Janeiro’s City Hall and was attended by senior Olympic and Israeli officials, plus families of the slain athletes.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Jose Serra, said: “What happened in 1972 was one of the most lamentable episodes in the history of the Olympic Games, when fanaticism and intolerance [converged in a] deplorable act of terrorism.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister, Miri Regev, said that terror “does not differentiate [between] people” and that “when we fight against terror, we look for peace”.

Earlier in the week, IOC President Thomas Bach unveiled a memorial to the murdered Israeli athletes at Rio’s Olympic Village. He said it was an “attack not only on our fellow Olympians, but also an assault on the values that the Olympic Village stands for”.

In 2012, a ceremony held in the London Guildhall, organised by the Israeli Olympic Committee together with the Israeli Embassy in London and the Jewish Committee for the London Games, attracted a host of key figures from the worlds of politics and sport, including former Prime Minister David Cameron, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Olympic Committee and the President of the IOC.

Also at London 2012, after facing a backlash for refusing calls to hold a minute’s silence at the opening ceremony, the International Olympic Committee paid a surprise tribute to the 11 Israeli team members who were killed at the 1972 Munich Games, at the Olympic Village. Among those at the ceremony were Sebastian Coe, former London Mayor Boris Johnson, and several other IOC officials.

In 1972, a Palestinian terror group called Black September took a number of Israeli athletes hostage in the Munich Olympic Village and demanded the release of prisoners. They murdered several of the athletes and others were killed during a botched German rescue attempt.

In another development from the Olympics, the Egyptian judo competitor, who refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent has been severely reprimanded by the IOC and sent home from the Rio games. Islam El-Shehaby rejected the outstretched hand of Or Sasson, who eventually won Israel’s second bronze medal of the games. The IOC said that El-Shehaby’s conduct was “contrary to the rules of fair play and against the spirit” of the Olympics.

 

CORRECTION: this article has been updated at 16.25, on Tuesday, 16 August, to correct an inaccuracy – the Rio City Hall ceremony was not the first ever held in honour of the Israeli athletes killed in Munich, as similar ceremonies were held at previous Olympic Games.