18th Israel Maccabiah Remembers Munich Terror Victims

18th Israel Maccabiah Remembers Munich Terror Victims

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Tel Aviv, Israel ---- July 9, 2009 ...... Over 1,000 Jewish athletes, families, coaches, staff and administrators of the 18th Maccabiah Games in Israel took part in a memorial ceremony today to remember the 11 Israel Olympians who were murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The "Munich Massacre" took place during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israel Olympic team were taken hostage and murdered by Black September, an Islamic terror organization with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.

The terrorist group had murdered eleven Israel athletes and coaches and one West German police officer. Israel responded to the massacre with Operation Spring of Youth and Operation Wrath of God, a series of airstrikes and assassinations of those terrorists which planned the killings.

Those murdered were Moshe Weinberg (wrestling coach), Yossef Romano (weightlifter), Ze'ev Friedman (weightlifter), David Berger (weightlifter), Yakov Springer (weightlifting judge), Eliezer Halfin (wrestler), Yossef Gutfreund (wrestling referee), Kehat Shorr (shooting coach), Mark Slavin (wrestler), Andre Spitzer (fencing coach), Amitzur Shapira (track coach) and Anton Fliegerbauer a German police officer.

Jeanne Futeran, President of the Maccabi World Union addressed those attending the memorial.

"Families of Munich athletes, Ambassador Kindermann, Ephraim Zinger, Stuart Lustigman, Gideon Osterer and Maccabim from Germany, chaverim!

After 9/11 in New York in 2001, more people seemed to understand what really happened at Munich in 1972, and why. Today, many more people know what happened at Munich, but most have no true understanding of why it happened.

Since the last time I was here, during the 17th Maccabiah in 2005, they made a movie called 'Munich'. It is not really about the crime against humanity at the Olympic village in 1972. It is dramatic fiction about why the crime happened and about what happened and why, after the crime.

Movies about real events can be a very good thing, because more people know that something happened. But fiction movies can also do bad things, and spread wrong impressions of the truth. The falseness of fiction becomes belief, and belief becomes truth.

The true reality of Munich is terribly hard to imagine. Perhaps we do not want to imagine the horrible reality that befell Jewish athletes in Munich. From the outside, we know what happened, but we can never know what happened inside, inside the hearts and minds and souls of our athletes we feel we need to know, but that is what we cannot, or do not want to imagine.

As to the hearts and minds and souls of the killers - we have no need to know what happened inside them. They came in evil. They came to murder. They came to kill, and even to be killed themselves. They, and the people who sent them, deserved to die at Munich, and after Munich. They, and the people who sent them, made themselves pure evil. They deliberately forfeited their own humanity. They do not deserve the grace of remembrance. Only the horror of their action must be remembered.

Those who came to Munich in the innocence of peace all deserved to live, the 11 who died and the 5 who survived, and the policeman who was murdered, they all deserved to live. They deserve the grace of our remembrance.

We must cherish their memory in our hearts.
As long as we remember them, evil wins no victory.
It is our duty, and that is the truth, those are the only true lessons of Munich."

During the Maccabiah Munich Memorial which took place in Tel Aviv, dozens of candles were lit and flowers were placed at the memorial site on Weizman Street.

The Maccabiah Munich memorial ended with the Yiskor, reciting the prayer for the dead and the singing of the Israel national anthem - Hatikva.

The Maccabiah is the world´s largest and best Jewish athletic competition in the tradition and values of Maccabi, emphasizing the centrality of the State of Israel in the life of the Jewish People.

The principal mission of the Maccabiah is to facilitate a worldwide gathering of young Jewish athletes in Israel, staging the highest possible levels of sports competitions, and strengthening their connection to the State of Israel and the Jewish People.

Known as the Jewish Olympics, the 18th Maccabiah kicks off in just under a week as Israel plays host to more than 10,000 athletes and 20,000 tourists and supporters from 60 countries.

As the world’s third largest sports event after the Olympics, the Maccabiah Games plays host to 3000 junior Maccabiah athletes, aged 15 -18; 5,000 open athletes, 2,000 masters and Paralympics. In addition to the visitors, Israel will itself be fielding a team of more than 2.000 athletes.

Sports for which competitors will be going for Gold include: artistic gymnastics, badminton, baseball, basketball, beach volleyball, bridge, cricket, chess, fencing, golf, gymnastics, handball, half-marathon, field hockey, judo, karate, netball, lawn bowls, rowing, rugby, squash, soccer, softball, swimming, table-tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, track and field, ten-pin bowling, volleyball, water polo, wrestling and windsurfing.

The 18th Maccabiah Games will be utilizing powerful Web 2.0 social networking to connect in real time with millions in Israel and worldwide. There are Twitter channels: wmu, maccabi, israelmaccabiah and #maccabiah and two official Facebook groups.

A state of the art Web 2.0 Maccabiah Web site is expected to be launched within the next 48 hours.

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