September 1972. Worth remembering. I'll bet most of our children never heard of it, because we don't teach such things anymore.Check out his post for the video clips.
History and terrorism started with the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
What do the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics have in common with the Mideast peace talks?
Well, for one thing--the anniversary of the former is this week, while the peace talks are going on.
The other thing the Munich Massacre has in common with the current iteration of the Mideast peace talks is: Mahmoud Abbas.
Back in 2002, Alexander Wolff of Sports Illustrated wrote about an encounter Sports Illustrated's Don Yaeger had with Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the Munich Massacre. Daoud agreed to respond to written questions. Among the things Daoud told him:
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.Obviously, Daoud overestimated the qualifications for a Middle East peace partner these days--and Abbas did not hesitate to eulogize Daoud this year.
On the other hand, in 2003, one year after the Daoud interview, when ZOA sponsored a poll by John McLaughlin and Associates they found that:
64% believe that world leaders should refuse to meet with Arafat’s number two man, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), since he has claimed that the Nazis did not murder six million Jews—just as world leaders have refused to meet with others who have denied or distorted the Holocaust.
While the leaders may have shrugged off Abbas's past, Americans knew where Abbas stood on Holocaust denial and on that issue alone realized that Abbas was simply not the kind of person the worlds leaders should be meeting with.
But polls have nothing to do with official US policy and only have an effect when the politicians themselves find it expedient to have one.
The names of the victims of the Munich Massacre are:
- Moshe Weinberg, wrestling coach, age 33;
- Yossef Romano, weightlifter, 31
- Ze'ev Friedman, weightlifter, 28
- David Berger, weightlifter, 28
- Yaakov Springer, weightlifting coach, age 51
- Eliezer Halfin, wrestler, 24
- Yossef Gutfreund, wrestling referee, 40
- Kehat Shorr, shooting coach, 53
- Mark Slavin, wrestler, 18
- Andre Spitzer, fencing referee, 27
- Amitzur Shapira , track coach, 40
Technorati Tag: Munich Massacre and Abbas.
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