In case anyone doesn't recognize them, the guy on the left is Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, and the one on the right is RINO former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. The picture was taken at the London Olympics.
Here's a letter that was posted by an IDF officer to US Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman's Facebook page (Hat Tip: Algemeiner Journal).
Dear Aly,
I want to tell you about how you became the hero of a gym full of Israeli soldiers.
The same Israeli soldiers who have to deal with Iran’s nuclear threat to the Jewish state. The same ones who serve two-to-three years of their lives, because we have to; because there’s no one else that would do it besides us, because our neighborhood sucks, and when the leadership next door in Syria massacres their own people, there’s no way we would let them lay hands on our kids, as foreign dictators have done for thousands of years.
You picked a song for your floor routine in the Olympics that every Jewish kid knows, whether their families came from the shtetls of Eastern Europe, the Asian steppes of Azerbaijan, the mountains of Morocco or the Kibbutzim of northern Israel. It’s that song that drew almost everyone at the Israeli army base gym to the TV as soon as the report about you came on the news this morning. After showing your floor exercise to Hava Nagila, the announcer told about your gold medal with unmasked pride, and of your decision to dedicate it to the Israeli athletes who were killed in the Munich Olympics in 1972.
There were some tough people at that gym, Aly. Men and Women, Battalion Commanders from Intelligence, Captains from the navy, Lieutenants from the Armored Corps and more. You probably understand that words like ‘bravery’ and ‘heroism’ carry a lot of weight coming from them, as does a standing ovation (even from the people doing ab exercises.) There was nothing apologetic about what you did. For so long we’ve had to apologize for who we are: for how we dress, for our beliefs, for the way we look. It seems like the International Olympic Committee wanted to keep that tradition. Quiet, Jews. Keep your tragedy on the sidelines. Don’t disturb our party.
They didn’t count on an 18 year-old girl in a leotard.
There wasn’t one person at the gym who didn’t know what it was like to give back to our people, not one who didn’t know what happened to the good people who died in 1972, not one who didn’t feel personally insulted by their complete neglect in the London Olympics, the 40 year anniversary of their deaths, and not one who didn’t connect with your graceful tribute in their honor.
Thank you for standing up against an injustice that was done to our people. As I was walking back to my machine at the gym, I caught one of the officers give a long salute to your image on television. I think that says it all.
LATMA on the economic cost of attacking Iran and the most decorated President
Sorry I am so late getting online today. But since I am in Boston and the Sabbath does not start here for about another eight hours, at least those of you who are not in Israel and points east of there ought to have plenty of posts before the Sabbath and the Israelis can tune in tomorrow night.
Here's the weekly LATMA update.
An economic (not at all political) calculation of how much the attack will cost, a survey of Israel's Olympic achievements, those annoying people who are always right and story time about a president with honor galore.
I particularly liked the Olympic skit. And of course, the most decorated President story.
Aly Raisman and family visiting Israel in December
US Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Aly Raisman will visit Israel with her family in December as a guest of Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein. They've never been here before.
In a phone conversation facilitated by US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Raisman told Edelstein that she was really happy to be invited and that she would decide with her family when would be the best time to come.
A source close to Edelstein said the end of December would be a likely choice because Raisman's younger siblings Brett, Chloe, and Madison would be on vacation from school. Raisman and her family have never been to Israel.
The gymnast won a gold medal for her floor routine, which she performed to the tune of “Hava Nagila.” She won another gold medal for the performance of the US women’s gymnastics team she captained and a bronze in the balance-beam competition.
Likud MK Danny Danon, who chairs the Knesset's Diaspora Affairs Committee, said he would invite Raisman to the Knesset to address the committee.
Raisman may not be the only medal winner to come to Israel. Sailor Jo Aleh, who won a gold medal for New Zealand in women's 470 class sailing, is expected to come to Israel for the Bat Mitzvah of her half-sister, who lives on a kibbutz with her father Shuki.
Hero worship? What do they expect an 18-year old who has never been here to tell a Knesset committee? Leave the kid alone and let her enjoy her time here so she'll want to come back.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein has invited US Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman and her family to visit Israel as his guests.
Edelstein wrote Raisman an impassioned letter congratulating her for her victories and for giving Americans yet another reason to be proud. In the letter, which was obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, Edelstein said Israelis were moved by her performance and her recent statements.
“I am sure you know that beyond your wonderful personal achievement, you also brought great pride to millions of Jews in Israel and around the world,” Edelstein wrote. “For me personally, as the minister in charge of relations with Diaspora Jewry, hearing why you chose the song made me realize that the concept of Kol Israel Arevim Zeh Lazeh [All Jews are responsible for one another] still holds true and that the Jewish people remain united no matter how far apart we may live. I was impressed that someone so young made such a monumental, ethical decision.”
Edelstein invited not only the 18-year-old gymnast, but also her parents, Lynn and Rick, her younger siblings Brett, Chloe, and Madison, as his guests.
“Making your first visit to Israel is not only important because it is the homeland of the Jewish people but also because you can contribute from your experience to the young generation of Israeli athletes,” wrote Edelstein, who has won international competitions in boxing and table tennis.
If they can get her to make aliya, maybe Israel will actually win a medal at Rio in 2016....
For every Olympics since 1976, Spitzer has asked the IOC for a moment of silence at the opening ceremonies to honor the murdered Israelis. For every Olympics since 1976, she has been rebuffed. She says that the IOC's explanations have varied over the years, but none have been satisfactory. She says that she was once told that such a moment of silence wasn't in the Olympic protocol. Yet there have been acknowledgements of atrocities ranging from the Bosnian conflict to 9/11; as recently as the Vancouver Olympics, there was a moment of silence to honor the Georgian luger who died before the Games in a training run. Spitzer says she was told the moment of silence could spur a boycott among Arab countries. "If they don't understand the Olympic spirit, they should stay home," she says flatly. Similarly, Spitzer has also been told that such a moment of silence would politicize the Games. "Fine," she responded. "Just say they were Olympic athletes, part of the Olympic family." (Officials did stage a moment of silence for those 'who are not with us' during the opening ceremony.) In the spring, she met with IOC President Jacques Rogge -- who, ironically, had competed as a yachtsman in the Munich Olympics -- but again was told no. "The lame excuses have culminated," she says. "I hate to conclude this but [rejection of the moment of silence] is because they were from the wrong country and had the wrong religion."
The article illustrates the hatred expressed by the Muslim world for Israel. While it gives some space to the political cover used, it is sympathetic to Spitzer's effort.
Another woman said that she'd have observed the moment of silence. In this case it's gold medal winning gymnast Aly Raisman. Responding to why she used "Hava Nagila" as music for her floor exercise, Raisman explained: (via memeorandum):
“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.” Then Raisman stuck the landing. “If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”
Though it's probably better known for its annual swimsuit issue, Sports Illustrated occasionally features some investigative reporting. Ten years, one of this writers interview the mastermind of the Munich massacre, Abu Daoud. The interview included this:
Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
I don't know if there's any other source confirming this.
While I knew of Avery Brundage and I now know of Jacques Rogge, Peter Martino gives the history of another Olympic official who made excuses for hatred of Jews.
Meanwhile, Joods Actueel, a Jewish monthly magazine in Antwerp, Belgium, published details of the shameful anti-Semitic past of the International Olympic Committee and its former president, Count Henri de Baillet-Latour – like Rogge, a Belgian aristocrat. Baillet-Latour was IOC president from 1925 until his death in 1942. Joods Actueel delved into the Count's past. Journalists Geert Versyck and Guido Joris discovered that the Count and his wife were Nazi sympathizers. To keep this truth hidden, the IOC is trying to rewrite its own history, presenting Baillet-Latour as a critic of the Nazis rather than a supporter. Baillet-Latour was IOC President in 1931, when the decision was made to hold the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, the Nazis began to turn the Games into a propaganda tool to demonstrate to the world the superiority of the Aryan race. In 1933, Jews were barred from civil service in Germany and Jewish athletes were excluded from sports clubs. Even Gretel Bergmann, the high-jumper who held the German record, was banned -- because she was a Jew -- from participating in the Olympics.
2) We wouldn't want to make the same mistake again
David Ignatius in a column, The Myth of the Mad Mullahs, celebrating the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran had stopped working towards producing a nuclear weapon, wrote:
The debate about what the NIE should mean for U.S. policy toward Iran is just beginning. But for the intelligence community, this rebuttal of conventional wisdom will restore some integrity after the Iraq WMD debacle. In challenging the previous certitudes about Iran and the Bomb, the NIE recalls the admonition many decades ago by the godfather of CIA analysts, Sherman Kent: "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one's bigotry, and to do a little conscientious introspection."
Challah Hu Akbar quotes from Ha'aretz that “recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report on the Iranian nuclear program, which shares Israel's view that Iran has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability.”
Wouild Ignatius say that failing to assess an enemy's capabilities correctly would constitute a debacle?
By any measure, I am not a Jew. I was not born to a Jewish woman. I was not raised nor educated as a Jew; therefore I do not, as Adam Garfinkle might argue, see the world through the eyes of a Jew, evincing Jewish moral sensibilities or exhibiting any sign of Jewish historical memory. But I do have the power of recall, and I do, as a non-Jew, recognize vicious anti-Semitism when I see it. The Iranian government is as anti-Semitic as the Third Reich. Listen to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and you hear strains of Adolf Hitler.
I do not know where King stands regarding Israel. But this is a remarkable essay that makes no excuses for Iranian hatred of Jews. It is a far cry from what we'd see in the opinion pages of the New York Times where Roger Cohen excused the tyranny of the Iranian regime and editorials portray Israel as a complication to American effort to counter Iran.
I'm sure that many of you recall Aly Raisman, the young American woman who did a floor exercise to the tune of Hava Nagila. Raisman won two gold medals at the Olympics, and afterward said that she would have stood behind a moment of silence in memory of the Munich 11.
After a flawless floor routine, performed to the tune of “Hava Nagila”, U.S. gymnast Aly Raisman won her second gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and then invoked the memory of the 11 slain Israeli athletes and coaches killed at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
“Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” said Raisman, who became the first American woman to win gold in the floor exercise. “But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”
Confirming what she told The Algemeiner in July, Raisman, who is Jewish, remarked to reporters in London that she would have stood behind the decision to hold a minute of silence to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the murders in Munich, had the International Olympic Committee decided to agree to it.
“If there had been a moment’s silence, I would have supported it and respected it,” she said.
I suspect that she would have done a lot more than 'supported it and respected it,' but that she was afraid of saying more than that to the media at the Olympics.
The New York Post put it in slightly more dramatic terms (Hat Tip: Gary P), comparing Raisman to John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who gave a black power salute after winning medals at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
It wasn’t a gloved-fist salute from the medal stand, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman made quite a statement yesterday by winning a gold medal and invoking the memory of the Israeli athletes killed 40 years ago in Munich.
Raisman finished first in the women’s floor exercise, but she deserves to have another medal draped around her neck for having the chutzpah to face the world and do what needed to be done and say what needed to be said.
At the same Olympic Games where bigoted organizers stubbornly refuse to honor the slain athletes with a moment of silence, 18-year-old Raisman loudly shocked observers first by winning, then by paying her own tribute to 11 sportsmen who died long before she was born.
And if that weren’t enough, she won her event with the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila” playing in the background.
“Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” an emotional but poised Raisman told reporters after her performance.
“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”
Then Raisman stuck the landing.
“If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”
...
Were it not for young Aly and her wedding dance/bat mitzvah accompaniment, the Munich dead may have never gotten their due.
“I am Jewish, that’s why I wanted that floor music,’’ Raisman said.
“I wanted something the crowd could clap to, especially being here in London.
“It makes it even much more if the audience is going through everything with you. That was really cool and fun to hear the audience clapping.’’
Raisman’s eyes opened as wide as the gold medal she would win when the judges announced her score of 15.600 points after her mistake-free routine.
Her top finish was the first by an American woman in the Olympic floor exercise, and the win gave Raisman her second gold medal. Raisman admitted the 40th anniversary of the Munich Games made her “hora” gold even more special.
“That was the best floor performance I’ve ever done, and to do it for the Olympics is like a dream,’’ Raisman said.
And here's something kind of neat: Raisman is from Newton, Mass, which just happens to be where yours truly grew up (Hat Tip: NY Nana). Someone please tell me she wants to make aliya....
Munich widow blasts International Olympic Committee
On Monday night, there was a memorial in London for the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered at the Munich Olympic games 40 years ago. While the memorial was outside the framework of the Olympics, International Olympic Committee chairman Jacques Rogge was there, and was blasted by Munich widow Ankie Spitzer.
IOC President likely to be blasted at Munich memorial in London
IOC President Jacques Rogge plans to attend a memorial service in London on Monday for the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. It ought to be justifiably uncomfortable for him.
Monday’s service, which is a Jewish community event, has created a “dilemma” for organizers, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.
IOC president Jacques Rogge refused international appeals including from that of President Barack Obama to the Israeli widows of the Munich 11 to legislators around the world to hold a moment of silence during last week’s opening ceremonies of the London Olympics for Israelis slain by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich games.
British Jewish leaders said they did not feel that they could withdraw an invitation to Rogge because they did not formally offer one, according to the Chronicle. Rogge has said he will attend the event and he has met privately with two widows of the murdered Israelis.
One of those women, Ankie Spitzer, told the Chronicle, “I have been asked to speak. What I am going to say to the IOC will not be nice. But that’s too bad. I do not want to see them there… I will tell them they are two-faced hypocrites and should have stayed at home. ”
Actually, if Mrs. Spitzer has the courage to tell Rogge to his face what she thinks of him, I think he ought to be forced to hear that.
Ram and Erlich were outplayed in the first set, but edged the Swiss team in a tight second set tiebreak and clinched the win thanks to a single break of serve in the third set.
It won't be getting any easier for the Israeli duo, with No. 1 seeds Bob and Mike Bryan waiting in the last eight at Wimbledon.
"This is a massive achievement," Ram said. "We were very nervous at the start, but we got our act together in the second set. It is amazing to beat Roger Federer, but I insist that this win is just another step towards the big goal."
And here's the other highlight of the day:
Yakov Toumarkin became just the second Israeli swimmer to ever reach an individual Olympic final, recording a result of 1:57.33 minutes in the 200-meter backstroke semifinals, equal to the Israeli record he set in the morning heats, to advance from eighth place overall to Thursday's final.
The 20-year-old, who became the first Israeli to win two medals in a single European Championships earlier this year, follows in the footsteps of Eitan Urbach, who ended the 100m back final in eighth place in the 2000 Sydney Games.
As much as I really haven't been following the Olympics, and I'm disgusted that there was no moment of silence, I would like nothing better than to see the Nazis and Islamists on the IOC forced to play HaTikva (our national anthem).
#JustOneMinute Italian and French athletes protest IOC's 'moment of silence' refusal
Olympic athletes from Italy and France have staged protests at the Olympic games against the IOC's refusal to have a moment of silence at the opening ceremony in memory of the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered 40 years ago in Munich (Hat Tip: Ricky G).
The IOC’s refusal to permit a minute’s silence for victims of the Munich terror attack 40 years ago has already provoked a protest from the Italian team, who staged a minute’s solidarity silence outside the Israeli team’s quarters.
Now a French swimmer has found another method of commemoration. Fabien Gilot, a member of the gold medal-winning 4 x 100 team raised his arm in triumph to reveal a tattoo in Hebrew reading: אני כלום בלעדיהם - in English: I am nothing without them.
We appreciate the sentiment. There are fundamental changes needed in the makeup of the IOC.
Video: US gymnast does floor exercise to Hava Nagila
Hava Nagila kind of grates on me - perhaps because of too many Jewish anti-Semites who, when I was a kid, would start singing it when they saw someone with a yarmulka walking down the street. But this is pretty neat.
US gymnast Aly Raisman (who is Jewish) advanced to the finals on Sunday after this floor exercise to the tune of Hava Nagila.
Yes, NBC's Bob Costas really did do a moment of silence in memory of the 11 Israelis murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The moment lasted about give seconds, and then NBC went to a commercial break.
What is unfolding in London is a mirror-image of the conduct of the United Nations and its organizations seeking to not hurt the” feelings” of Muslim-majority countries. In short, mass cowardice prevails over basic human rights and confronting terrorism.
Moreover, the Obama administration’s ongoing refusal to invite Israel to participate in the U.S.-sponsored Global Counterterrorism Forum is part and parcel of the soggy indifference toward Israel’s security interests, this time at the expense of placating Turkey.
In one of the most insightful commentaries on the failure of left-liberals to tackle pressing human-rights issues, the Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger neatly captured in his May article a new phenomenon. He wrote that “the Liberals and Democrats who work on human-rights issues won’t like to hear this, but with the Obama presidency, human rights has completed its passage away from the political left, across the center and into its home mainly on the right — among neoconservatives and evangelical Christian activists.”
All of this helps to explain why conservatives have played a key role in the call to remember the murdered Israeli athletes and have consistently urged the Obama administration to include Israel in its Global Counterterrorism Forum.
In 1996, I, along with other Munich orphans and three of the widows, were invited for the first time to the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Before the Opening Ceremony, we met with Alex Gilady. Gilady has been a member of the IOC's Radio and Television Commission since 1984 and has been the senior vice president of NBC Sports since 1996.
I have known Mr. Gilady since I was a kid; in fact, I grew up with his daughter. He had been supportive in the past regarding our plea for a moment of silence during the Opening Ceremonies, so we arrived with high hopes. Gilady informed us that a moment of silence was not possible because if the IOC had a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes, they would also have to do the same for the Palestinians who died at the Olympics in 1972.
My mother said, "But no Palestinian athletes died."
Gilady responded, "Well, there were Palestinians who died at the 1972 Olympics."
I heard one of the widows say to Gilady, "Are you equating the murder of my husband to the terrorists that killed him?"
Silence.
Then Ilana Romano burst out with a cry that has haunted me to this day. She screamed at Gilady, "How DARE you! You KNOW what they did to my husband! They let him lay there for hours, dying slowly, and then finished him off by castrating him and shoving it in his mouth, ALEX!"
Alex Gilady, as you might recall, is an Israeli who led the Israeli media delegation at the 1972 Olympics. Avery Brundage, who was the IOC President who infamously said in 1972 'let the games go on,' was a Nazi. Weinberg adds
[Brundage's] protege, Juan Samaranch, eventually served the second longest IOC term as president, but his support of Nazis and the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was kept a dirty secret.
That's right folks, the International Olympic Committee is full of Nazis.
What is Israel doing there at all? Maybe what we Israelis really ought to be doing is to call on our own government to stop showing up at the Olympic games every four years as if nothing happened.
Both teams were scheduled to train inside London’s ExCeL center but Lebanon’s team did not want to be seen by the Israeli one, and IOC officials heeded to the Lebanese’s demand after the team’s coach demanded separation.
Do you all remember the movie An American Tale and its (delusional - and that was exactly the point) theme song, "There are no cats in America"? There are no politics at the Olympics.
Iranian judoka withdraws from competition against Israeli
The Iranian who is most likely to face an Israeli in the Olympics has withdrawn due to a 'gut infection.'
Iranian Javad Mahjoub qualified in the same half-heavyweight judo category as an Israeli, Ariel Ze’evi, who participated in the last three Olympics, won the bronze medal in Athens 2004, and is the 2012 European champion. The half-heavyweight category competition is scheduled for August 2.
But Iranian Sports Medicine Federation head Lotfali Pour-Kazemi said this week Mahjoub’s condition required a 10-day antibiotic course and he would not be able to compete. An Iranian judo website quoted him as saying the judoka was experiencing “weakness, nausea and vomiting.”
Mahjoub’s name still appeared Thursday on the Iranian national Olympic committee (NOC) list of 54 competitors at the London games.
During the Judo World Cup in Tashkent in 2011, Mahjoub was lined up in a head-to-head against another Israeli, Or Sasson, but refused to compete.
For his part, Ze’evi has been on the receiving end of an anti-Israel boycott before, when a Tunisian withdrew rather than taken him on during world judo championships in 2001. Ze’evi won silver.
Iranians withdrew from events pitting them against Israelis in the last two Olympic Games, in Athens 2004 (judo) and Beijing 2008 (swimming).
The Olympic Charter states, “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.”
“We have just told all the national Olympic committees that we expect all the athletes to respect the schedule of competition and not to pull out without a good reason for competition against an athlete of another country,” Rogge told the London Guardian last month.
“If nation A does not appear at the competition against nation B we will ask for explanations,” he said. “If the explanation is not satisfactory and valid at the end of it and is not credible then we will go into cross-examination by an independent medical board. And if the medical board says it is not a genuine reason then sanctions will be taken. That is quite clear.”
There's another Iranian who may yet withdraw from competition rather than compete against an Israeli. Read the whole thing.
Here's betting Iran won't be sanctioned. After all, they're only refusing to compete against the Jooooz.
According to Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee:
"Sports are meant for peace, not for racism... Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations]." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 25, 2012]
Had the call for a minutes silence remained an online issue, and had it remained an issue about Israelis, the IOC could have continued to ignore it. They have done so in the past without much difficulty. This, however, is 2012. The threat of terrorism, and efforts to mitigate that threat, permeate the games. The threat of terrorism, and the erosion of fundamental rights through anti-terror measures around the world, is a topic of public interest and conversation. Enough time has passed since September 11 for the world to again begin thinking about the balance between security and the cost it imposes on our daily lives.
The response to terrorism is something Israel began dealing with a long time ago. The world has changed and today more than ever people around the globe acknowledge the loss of terror victims and the suffering of their families. This is increasingly done without regard for nationality. The IOC’s mistake was thinking the minutes silence was about placating Israelis and the families of the victims. Whatever the wishes of the victims’ families, the campaign gained worldwide support for its own reasons and on its own merits. It spoke to people, and they connected with it and shared it.
The 1972 terrorist attack was not an attack on Israelis as much as it was an attack on the Olympics itself. The decision to ban Apartheid South Africa from the games all those decades ago shows that the Olympics is not entirely free of world politics, it is just very cautious and only acts in line with world consensus. That’s where the IOC went wrong; in this matter there is a consensus and the IOC is trying to ignore it.
Today’s global consensus is actively against terror. In the face of terror, be it a natural disaster or the politically motivated terror human kind invents for itself, people around the world stand together as one. Social media plays a role as the world becomes ever more connected. The IOC’s failure to incorporate a minutes silence into the opening of the games appears as a failure of leadership; a failure to stand with the people of the world and speak out against our greatest fear.
The timing too is significant. Let us for a moment recall that the Olympics only occur every four years. This is therefore the tenth games since the terrorists attacked. There will be no fiftieth anniversary at the 2022 Olympic Games. Indeed, due to the Olympic schedule there will be no 2022 Games. In this context, the failure by the International Olympic Committee to very publicly acknowledge that the games too have been a victim of terror, is akin to an American President refusing to commemorate September 11 on a major anniversary of that tragic event. It is indeed incomprehensible.
The IOC has a clear moral choice to make tomorrow - to stand with the terrorists of the 'Palestinian Authority' or to be true to the Olympic Games and their participants. Given the IOC's pasthistory, the odds of them making the right choice are not too promising.
Iranian official media disputed on Tuesday earlier reports that Iranian athletes will not boycott competitions against Israelis at the London Olympics.
The state-run Fars news agency claimed that Israeli media misquoted comments from the general secretary of Iran’s Olympic committee on the issue.
A report in Fars charged that the Israeli media “maliciously changed Bahram Afsharzadeh’s words and sought to project comments from the general secretary of Iran’s Olympic committee as they like.”
“Afsharzadeh responded to journalists in the Olympic village, saying Iran respects the spirit of sports and Iranian sportsmen would not boycott matches because of the nationality of most participants,” the report said, adding that Afsharzadeh did not name Israel.
On Monday, Afsharzadeh insisted that the country’s athletes will be "faithful to sport” and not walk out on competitions involving Israelis.
He said Iranian athletes have signed a pledge, backed by the United Nations, to leave hostilities outside of the Games.
Similar statements were made by athletes from the Islamic Republic before a swimming competition in the 2008 Beijing Games, when an Iranian swimmer dropped out of a race in which an Israeli was to compete, allegedly due to illness. He said he suddenly felt sick, possibly at the idea of having to swim in the same pool as a Jew.
In 2004, an Iranian judo athlete refused to fight an Israeli in the Olympics.
Meanwhile, Army Radio reported on Tuesday that the Iranian team departed for London without its judo champion Javad Mahjoob who would likely have faced off against Israel’s Arik Ze’evi in the games.
The Iranians claimed he is suffering from an infection which renders him unable to participate.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
In case anyone doesn't recognize them, the guy on the left is Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, and the one on the right is RINO former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. The picture was taken at the London Olympics.
