Moshe Weinberg
Yossef Romano
Zeev Friedman
David Berger
Yakov Springer
Eliezer Halfin
Yossef Gutfreund
Kehat Shorr
Mark Slavin
Andre Spitzer
Amitzur Shapira
I am totally appalled. No words can even describe it. Has Munich completely forgotten what happened the last time the Olympics were held there?!?
It saddens me that a city which has not cleaned up the mess from the last time the Games were held there is at it again. Some people might say, well this is different and the terror threat would be less at a Winter Games. Bull. The Olympics are the Olympics, winter or summer.
I don't know where these people are coming from, that allowed the Munich bid to advance in the first place. Where is the outrage? Or are people so numbed by now that thinking "ignore it and it will go away" is the norm? I know of at least one IOC member who feels that way. At first it surprised me, but after I started digging into his background, then I could see the hypocrisy involved. In public, he says one thing. In private, another. It's the private conversations he doesn't want the public to know about (and the very ugly comment he made in Prague in 2003 in regards to the Munich families.) And he's still around. And still part of the problem.
Folks, I have said it for years. We have to get real about Munich-past and present. The only way Munich will ever get another Olympics is if they clean up the mess from the past, the IOC gives the families the 30 seconds of silence at the beginning of a Summer Games opening ceremony (not too much to ask, I think), then and ONLY then should another Munich bid (Winter or Summer) move forward.
President Rogge promised years ago that he would do something for the families. He's backtracked, and that was after he went to a memorial service in Germany for the victims. It's totally disgraceful how he has acted. But the IOC has acted the same way, and in that regard, has given tacit approval to his actions (or lack of them.)
We as arbiters of the written word have an obligation to take a moral stand. Some will and most will not. This is a bid that should have never left the gate.
I for one have the cajones to say No Way No How Never.
Will one other person join me in this call? One person-that is all I ask.
Please. For the Munich Eleven-so they did not die in vain.
Thank you.
