I'd be posting casual on the go comments to the Mike Averko's pieces, lest they just disappear in my mailbox.
The original:
Re: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/silence-munich-the-olympics-7236
Excerpt –
“The Obama administration supports it. So does Mitt Romney. The ‘it’ in question is a moment of silence for the Israeli victims of a Palestinian terrorist organization called Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Eleven members of the Israeli team were murdered. An online petition calling for a minute of silence also exists.
But IOC president Jacques Rogge sees it differently. He’s adamantly resisting a formal moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the London Games this Friday: ‘We feel that the opening ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident.’ When it comes to the Jews, the IOC curls into a fetal ball-as the Boston Globe points out, it has not resisted ceremonies for Bosnia or the victims of 9/11. But Munich is taboo.”
****
At present, I wasn’t able to successfully click into the aforementioned Boston Globe article. I’m not offhand sure how the IOC held a ceremony for Bosnia. There’s this RFE/RL photo gallery regarding Bosnia and the Olympics (11th of 14 photos, with a pointed omission of noting Russian athletes among the featured Soviets):
http://www.rferl.org/media/photogallery/24642976.html
The photo concerning Bosnia was taken at the 1992 summer Olympics when Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) was hypocritically kept out of that Olympiad. With some understandable disgust, Serbs and Montenegrins saw a Croat team take silver in men’s basketball, with the US finishing first. During this period, Yugoslavia appeared to have the second best men’s basketball team after the US. At the 1992 summer Olympics, Yugoslav teams were banned and individual Yugoslav athletes were made to compete as independent participants, not representing their country. The reason for this was quite hypocritical. Yugoslavia was accused of aiding Serb forces in the Bosnian Civil War, at a time when Croatia was doing the same for their brethren. In addition, the Bosnian Muslim nationalists were the recipients of foreign aid (military and otherwise) from abroad.
One wonders how multiethnic was the 1992 summer Olympic Bosnian delegation? At the time, I recall the Bosnian UN delegation being almost exclusively Muslim.
Bosnia continues to fall well short of a unitary mindset:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2012/07/21/the-uncertain-future-of-bosnia/
Excerpt (from the National Interest piece)-
“Fear of Arab pressure, even a boycott? The desire to maintain an upbeat tone rather than acknowledge the dark past? Whatever the motive, and nothing has ever been too craven for the IOC in the past, Rogge tried to pacify his critics with a minute-long ceremony at the Olympic Village on Monday a part of something called the Olympic Truce, which, as the Washington Post reports, is a United Nations initiative that calls upon everyone to lay down their arms around the world during the Olympics. (Is Bashar Assad listening?)”
****
Concerning that last particular, there’s another element having to do with the armed anti-Syrian government opposition. On the matter of laying down arms during an Olympiad, one can rhetorically bring this matter up in some other instances, including the Soviets in Afghanistan and the US in Southeast Asia.
Michael Averko - http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/2713 - http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/michael-averko/
My commentary:
I think the reasons for the refusal, if true, to hold a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes could be the following:
the issue is political and the Olympics should stay out of politics, it is not the case as the US has politicized and scandalized Olympics, but in theory the politics should be kept out - remembering victims of 9/11 is a different case as the issue is clearly not political. The 9/11 "attack" was organized by the US government to launch a series of wars of aggression and no political demands were made by any foreign power or party.
The event is relatively remote in time. There were quite a few atrocities in the past one can remember - those moments of silence can be extended to hours.
Lastly the Palestine Israeli issue is not resolved, the conflict is ongoing so forcing everyone to take the Israeli side openly is hardly diplomatic or fit for Olympics (why not remember those 3500 Palestinian civilians, women, small kids, murdered in the Sabra and Shatila massacre?). So though I am not condoning those who killed Israeli athletes in Munich, I think that if I were Jacques Rogge I would be very reluctant with the idea of this going ahead because Olympics was never intended to be the place to show off one's politically motivated sadness or sympathy or turn into a platform for partisan foreign policy propaganda displays.
The original:
Re: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/silence-munich-the-olympics-7236
Excerpt –
“The Obama administration supports it. So does Mitt Romney. The ‘it’ in question is a moment of silence for the Israeli victims of a Palestinian terrorist organization called Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Eleven members of the Israeli team were murdered. An online petition calling for a minute of silence also exists.
But IOC president Jacques Rogge sees it differently. He’s adamantly resisting a formal moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the London Games this Friday: ‘We feel that the opening ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident.’ When it comes to the Jews, the IOC curls into a fetal ball-as the Boston Globe points out, it has not resisted ceremonies for Bosnia or the victims of 9/11. But Munich is taboo.”
****
At present, I wasn’t able to successfully click into the aforementioned Boston Globe article. I’m not offhand sure how the IOC held a ceremony for Bosnia. There’s this RFE/RL photo gallery regarding Bosnia and the Olympics (11th of 14 photos, with a pointed omission of noting Russian athletes among the featured Soviets):
http://www.rferl.org/media/photogallery/24642976.html
The photo concerning Bosnia was taken at the 1992 summer Olympics when Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) was hypocritically kept out of that Olympiad. With some understandable disgust, Serbs and Montenegrins saw a Croat team take silver in men’s basketball, with the US finishing first. During this period, Yugoslavia appeared to have the second best men’s basketball team after the US. At the 1992 summer Olympics, Yugoslav teams were banned and individual Yugoslav athletes were made to compete as independent participants, not representing their country. The reason for this was quite hypocritical. Yugoslavia was accused of aiding Serb forces in the Bosnian Civil War, at a time when Croatia was doing the same for their brethren. In addition, the Bosnian Muslim nationalists were the recipients of foreign aid (military and otherwise) from abroad.
One wonders how multiethnic was the 1992 summer Olympic Bosnian delegation? At the time, I recall the Bosnian UN delegation being almost exclusively Muslim.
Bosnia continues to fall well short of a unitary mindset:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2012/07/21/the-uncertain-future-of-bosnia/
Excerpt (from the National Interest piece)-
“Fear of Arab pressure, even a boycott? The desire to maintain an upbeat tone rather than acknowledge the dark past? Whatever the motive, and nothing has ever been too craven for the IOC in the past, Rogge tried to pacify his critics with a minute-long ceremony at the Olympic Village on Monday a part of something called the Olympic Truce, which, as the Washington Post reports, is a United Nations initiative that calls upon everyone to lay down their arms around the world during the Olympics. (Is Bashar Assad listening?)”
****
Concerning that last particular, there’s another element having to do with the armed anti-Syrian government opposition. On the matter of laying down arms during an Olympiad, one can rhetorically bring this matter up in some other instances, including the Soviets in Afghanistan and the US in Southeast Asia.
Michael Averko - http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/2713 - http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/michael-averko/
My commentary:
I think the reasons for the refusal, if true, to hold a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes could be the following:
the issue is political and the Olympics should stay out of politics, it is not the case as the US has politicized and scandalized Olympics, but in theory the politics should be kept out - remembering victims of 9/11 is a different case as the issue is clearly not political. The 9/11 "attack" was organized by the US government to launch a series of wars of aggression and no political demands were made by any foreign power or party.
The event is relatively remote in time. There were quite a few atrocities in the past one can remember - those moments of silence can be extended to hours.
Lastly the Palestine Israeli issue is not resolved, the conflict is ongoing so forcing everyone to take the Israeli side openly is hardly diplomatic or fit for Olympics (why not remember those 3500 Palestinian civilians, women, small kids, murdered in the Sabra and Shatila massacre?). So though I am not condoning those who killed Israeli athletes in Munich, I think that if I were Jacques Rogge I would be very reluctant with the idea of this going ahead because Olympics was never intended to be the place to show off one's politically motivated sadness or sympathy or turn into a platform for partisan foreign policy propaganda displays.
No comments:
Post a Comment