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News Analysi
Editorial
Remember Munich 11
Amid Olympic Games
Bulgaria Attack Shows
The True Face Of Iran
I
t won't make or break the
Summer Olympics, but
the International Olympic
Committee's rejection of an
Olympics tribute to the 11 Israeli
athletes and coaches murdered
.2,612
at the games in Munich 40 years
ago certainly is disconcerting.
The games are the right venue
for such a public humanitarian gesture.
The Olympics. begin Friday in London. Over the past
year, London's Jews, under the auspices of the Jewish
Committee for the London Games, have joined the city-
wide celebration of the 2012 games and are ready to
welcome the thousands of Jewish visitors who will attend
the competition.
In a May 1 letter, IOC president Jacques Rogge wrote
that the IOC "has paid tribute to the [murdered] athletes
on several occasions. Within the Olympic family, the
memory of the victims of the terrible massacre in Munich
in 1972 will never fade away."
IOC officials have participated in memorial ceremonies
hosted by Jewish communities in Olympic host cities, but
the IOC itself hasn't held a commemoration during the
games other than on the day after the massacre. You can
bet Arab pressure on the IOC not to revisit the tragedy is
a factor.
That's a shandeh.
This 40th anniversary of the shocking attack by the
Palestinian terrorist group Black September provides
an appropriate backdrop not only for an Olympic Village
salute to the Munich 11, but also a shout-out that height-
ened world sensitivity to violence and hatred means the
Fatah terrorists ultimately didn't win.
The government of Israel has partnered on a video
with the widows of the murdered athletes to promote the
campaign for a tribute at the games' opening ceremony.
"This video is one minute long, the same amount of
time we are asking the International Olympic Committee
to stop and remember, contemplate and to send a mes-
sage that the international sporting community will stand
against hatred and violence," says Israeli Deputy Foreign
Minister Danny Ayalon in the video.
President Obama, the U.S. Senate, Canada's House of
Commons, 140 Italian lawmakers, 100 Australian lawmak-
ers, 50 British lawmakers and German Foreign Minister
Guido Westerwelle are among supporters of an interna-
tional call for the IOC to hold a moment of silence at the
games. Noticeably missing is a voice from Great Britain
Prime Minister David Cameron's administration. Great
Britain's official position is the decision about a tribute
lies with the IOC; the government will be represented at
a private ceremony on Aug. 6 at the Guildhall – a joint
effort of the Israeli Embassy, the Israeli National Olympic
Committee and the Jewish community.
The Sept. 5,1972, terrorist attack in Germany was not
just an assault on the Israeli Olympic team. It also under-
cut the essence of peace, friendship and understanding
among nations for which the games stand.
With the threat of terrorism worldwide on high alert, a
minute of silence at the London games to the Munich 11
would serve to reinforce and remind how terror is wholly
antithetic to the Olympic idea. ❑
LONDON
0
OX
X
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Israeli ZAKA emergency rescue team at the scene of the bus terrorist attack in Bulgaria July 19.
New York JNS. org
F
or several years, United States policy toward
Iran has been focused on using diplomacy
to persuade Iran to give up its ambition of
achieving nuclear weapons. Starting with the Bush
administration, American diplomats and those of its
Western allies have tried various strategies, includ-
ing outsourcing the problem to be handled by France
and Germany, direct "engagement" with Tehran and
now the multilateral negotiations known as the P5+1
talks. All have utterly failed.
Iran's intransigence is deeply troubling
to the foreign policy realists who deprecate
talk of the need to at least threaten the use of
force to influence the outcome of the negotia-
tions.
Part of the explanation lies in the feckless
manner with which the West, and, in particu-
lar, the Obama administration, has pursued
the issue. Tehran does not believe the president
is in earnest when he says he will prevent them
from going nuclear, and it is difficult to fault
them for that conclusion. The "crippling sanc-
tions" imposed on them have not been fully
enforced, leaving them with enough economic
muscle to muddle through. The Iranians
believe, not without reason, that the administration's
only real interest right now is to prolong the negotia-
tions until after the November elections and thereby
prevent Israel from attacking on its own.
But there is another more fundamental fact that
has foiled diplomacy and that will continue to ensure
that nothing short of force will convince the Iranians
to desist. The real problem is not so much President
Obama's policies — foolish though they might be —
but the essential nature of the Iranian regime.
The world got a good look at the true face of Iran
not in the P5+1 negotiations, but on the bloodstained
pavement of Burgas, Bulgaria, where a terrorist attack
took the lives of five Israeli tourists and a local bus
driver. The atrocity, which both Israel and the United
States agree is the work of Hezbollah, Iran's loyal ter-
rorist auxiliary, was dismissed by some, including
senior U.S. officials speaking off the record, as a "tit
for tat" retaliation for the assassination of Iranian
nuclear scientists.
But the vicious targeting of Jewish victims is not
so much a tactic as an avocation for the Iranians.
68
July 26 * 2012
Foreign policy "realists" continue to insist that if a
"compromise" can be crafted that will enable them
to keep their nuclear program, the Iranians can be
trusted to keep their word and behave as a rational
international actor if they do get a bomb. But the truth
is, Iran's fundamentalist leaders are deeply immersed
in an anti-Semitic worldview in which hatred of Jews
is integral to their ongoing war on the West.
Iran's state-sponsored terrorism did not begin in
the wake of alleged Western and Israeli assassina-
tions of scientists or cyber attacks on their infra-
structure. It dates back to the very beginnings of the
Islamist regime. Iranian and Hezbollah
terrorists have struck at Jews around
the world, including the bombing of a
Jewish community building in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 18 years ago last week.
The regime's bizarre obsession with
Jewish power extends to all sorts of
topics. Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial is well
known. But the country's vice president
opened a United Nations conference on
drug trafficking last month by claiming
that Jews ran the international trade
in opiates and even asserted that they
were instructed to do so by the Talmud.
These are not stray facts that are sidelights to the
main debate about Iran's quest for power, but are
essential to understanding the nature of the regime.
Once you understand that their leaders are besotted
with conspiracy theories about Jews and believe that
killing them is a duty, the "realist" arguments about
Iran's rationality are quickly exposed as not only
absurd, but also irrelevant to the decisions that must
be made about halting their nuclear nightmare.
The bloodshed in Burgas, about which
Ahmadinejad openly bragged, cries out for more
than mere vengeance upon the perpetrators and their
sponsors. It should compel us to think more clearly
about the murderers and draw the proper conclu-
sions about the futility of sending our diplomats on a
fool's errand of more nuclear talks.
❑
JNS columnist Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor
of Commentary magazine and chief political blogger at
www.commentarymagazine.com. His e-mail is jtobin®
commentarymagazine.com and Twitter is https://fwitter.
com/#!/TobinCommentary.