By Jerry Klinger
LONDON, England — “The International Olympics exist to bring the world together in a spirit of friendly competition, promoting peace, and celebrating athleticism and sportsmanship. The games aim to cultivate human beings through sport, foster international cooperation, and encourage cultural exchange between athletes and spectators from diverse backgrounds.
The Olympics began as an ancient Greek religious festival in 776 B.C. and were revived in the modern era, with the first games held in Athens in 1896. The ancient games ceased in 393 A.D. but were re-established by Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894.”
The Olympics have a long history of antisemitism, politicization, and right-and left-wing jingoism. Contemporarily, international competitive sport has been degraded by Palestinianism and Islamism, movements designed to eliminate Israel and Jews.
Last week, a metal marker in Hackney, London, which had strangely worn out in just 13 years, was replaced with a stone one, hopefully to last 100 years. The original marker was sited in 2012, memorializing the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre. Eleven unarmed Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.Forty years earlier, the summer Olympic Games were held in Munich, Germany. It was an opportunity for Germany, led by anti-Nazi veteran German Chancellor Willy Brandt, to demonstrate to the world that Germany in 1972 was not Hitler’s Germany of 1936.
Brandt’s and Germany’s dream was destroyed when Palestinian Terrorists attacked the Olympic Village, kidnapping and eventually killing the Israeli athletes. The Palestinian Terrorists named themselves Black September, after the month the Jordanians bloodily expelled Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan. The Jordanian military killed thousands of Palestinians when the PLO threatened the existence of the Jordanian government. The PLO fled into Lebanon, morphing into more terror organizations, eventually destabilizing Lebanon.
Arab killed Arabs in Jordan during 1971’s Black September. Ironic, Jordan is a country ruled by a minority, Hashemite Bedouins, who were placed in control by the British Mandate for Palestine. They rule a country intended as a national home for Palestinians. Palestinians make up more than 60% of modern Jordan. Not one Jew lives in Jordan. The few that had lived in Jordan were driven out by the Arabs in 1948.
The world cared little about Arabs killing Arabs. Black September Palestinian terrorists recognized a better opportunity for their cause. Kill Jews instead.
Attacking defenseless Jews at the Munich Olympics garnered them the headlines they wanted. The chaos that ensued delayed the Olympics by one day. That one day of delay, ostensibly a memorialization for the murdered Israelis, was to be all the Olympic Committee would permit for many decades.
Germany built a very respectful memorial to the murdered Israeli athletes. In the U.S., a memorial was built in Cleveland, sited at the Jewish Community Center, for murdered Israeli/American Munich athlete David Berger.
The International Olympic Committee, at subsequent Olympics, refused a modest moment of silence in remembrance of the murdered Israeli athletes, saying it was “inappropriate.” The families of the murdered, organized, protested, and demanded to the deaf walls of the IOC that to not memorialize the victims of the horror, not just because they were Jews and Israelis, negated the very meaning and moral ideals of the Olympics.
Support for or against the effort fell across the global political, social, and religious divide.
In 2012, London was selected as the site for the Summer Olympics. British Jewry was organized under the leadership of Martin Sugarman. Sugarman chaired the London Munich 11 Memorial marker committee. The challenge: no venue, no site, nobody in London wanted a Munich 11 Memorial marker.
Sugarman explained, “Hackney was designated an Olympic Borough. (It was) Part of the Games facilities were in our Borough. We asked for a site in the Olympic Park, but it was designated too political and would upset the Arabs and others. Then we tried the Stratford Westfield shopping Centre, right near the stadium/. It would have been perfect. No. So we went with this site.”
A marker was organized and sited as near to the Olympic venue as possible. A veritable who’s who attended the dedication, among whom was Boris Johnson, then mayor of London and later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
A break in the struggle for an IOC moment of silence occurred in 2016 in Brazil’s games. The government demanded a moment of silence. It did not occur at the games.
In 2022, the IOC authorized a moment of silence during the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Summer Olympics in memory of the victims of the global Pandemic. The Pandemic had nothing to do with the Olympics. The IOC broadened the silent moment, before the COVID-19 empty stands, to include the Munich 11 victims. It was the best they would ever do.
Martin Sugarman is the U.K. representative of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP).He was the chairman of the 2012 Munich 11 London memorial marker committee. Sugarman brought the issue of the deteriorated Munich 11 marker in Hackney to us. JASHP agreed to fund the replacement.
The assaults against Israel to delegitimize its athletes continue globally.
Never forget means never forget.
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The text of the 2025 Munich 11 marker reads:
“This plaque commemorates the 40th anniversary of the murder by terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes at the 20th Olympiad in Munich in September 1972. They came to pay homage to the Games but paid with their lives. Never Again. David Berger, Ze’ev Friedman, Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amizur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yaakov Springer, Moshe Weinberg Unveiled by Lord Eric Pickles MP (Secretary of State); The Mayor of London Boris Johnson; Ben Helfgott (British Olympian 1956 and 1960); Efraim Zinger (Chair, Israel Olympic Committee); Members of both Houses of Parliament, many local, national and international dignitaries, at the London Olympics July 2012. “He makes my feet like the feet of an antelope and I am able to stand on the heights” (Psalms 18:34) (Hebrew text)
Initiated by Cllr Linda Kelly, Martin Sugarman, and donated by the Reuben Foundation and Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation
Erected 2025 by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.