News item:
GENEVA — Representatives of Israel’s Olympic committee are ready to help Palestinian athletes train for the London 2012 Games, the International Olympic Committee said on Thursday.
The offer came during a “constructive and cooperative” first meeting of Israeli and Palestinian Olympic officials in the Swiss city of Lausanne hosted by IOC President Jacques Rogge, the Olympic body said in a statement.
The meeting at IOC headquarters was a first attempt to broker an agreement over obstacles Palestinian athletes and players say they face, hampering training and travel to compete in sports events…
“In the short run, priority will be given to assisting Palestinian athletes to move towards their dream of taking part in the Olympic Games in London next year,” [the IOC] added. — AFP
I shouldn’t dwell too much on the irony that the same folks that used the Olympics to raise the profile of their ’cause’ in 1972 by mass murder are now using them again, this time to blame Israel for ‘obstacles’ their athletes face.
There’s really no need for me to point out that the ‘obstacles’ are security measures which exist because Munich in 1972 was neither the first nor the last time Palestinian Arabs turned to terrorism. Or that their objective is not self-determination or a state but the denial of those things to the Jews.
Abu Daoud (Mohammad Daoud Oudeh), the leader of the 1972 Palestinian 'Olympic team', died of natural causes in Syria in July 2010.
So why bring this up?
Because I think that if the Palestinian Arabs want to have a real Olympic team made up of athletes instead of murderers, if they want to give up barbarism and join the civilized world, they really ought to apologize. They ought to say that what happened at Munich in 1972 does not reflect their ideals and values any more, and that they sincerely regret the bloody murders that were done in their name.
You know what’s coming, right?
Last year Abu Daoud, the leader of the 1972 Palestinian ‘Olympic team’ that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman, died of natural causes in Syria. This is how Palestinian Arab leadership reacted:
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sent his condolences to Daoud’s family, WAFA reported. “He wrote in his letter to his family, ‘He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance [against the occupation] and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people’s just causes,’ ” the news agency quoted Abbas as saying. — CNN
You can read more tributes to Abu Daoud here. Even before his death, he was honored, winning the Palestine Prize for Culture in 1999 for his book “Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich”. In the book, he describes how he planned the Munich operation. After it was published, the German police issued an arrest warrant.
Now explain to me again how we can have peace with these people.
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