Flemish sports minister Philippe Muyters this week joined the growing international demand for a minute’s silence to be held at this summer’s London 2012 Games to honour the 11 slain Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
In a statement to Belgian Jewish publication Joods Actueel, the minister of the Flanders region appealed to his fellow countryman, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge to overturn his former decision not to proceed with an official commemoration of the massacres.
Writing of the controversial decision by Rogge, who was himself born in Ghent in Flanders, Muyters said: "I am sympathetic to the proposal that IOC president Jacques Rogge should hold a commemorative ceremony during the 2012 Olympics in memory of the 11 Israeli athletes who, along with a German police officer, were killed during a hijacking."
Last week, Canada added the most significant yet commitment to the protests launched by Dutch-Israeli journalist and Munich widow Ankie Rechess, when its parliament voted unanimously in favour of a memorial to the victims of the massacre by Palestinian terror group Black September at the Munich games 40 years ago.
The vote followed a previous letter and follow-up phone call from Canadian foreign minister John Baird to Rogge protesting against his refusal to mark the anniversary of the tragedy.
Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had previously added his official backing to a petition by two of the victims’ widows to institute an official observance of the 40th anniversary of the attack, but his calls were denied, as Rogge informed him "the IOC has officially paid tribute to the memory of the athletes on several occasions," insisting that despite the tragedy not been officially marked "the memory of the victims of the terrible massacre in Munich in 1972 will never fade away."
Ayalon slammed Rogge’s response to international protests to IOC, which also received the backing of cross-party British politicians as well as Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as "unacceptable as it rejects the central principles of the global fraternity on which the Olympic ideal is supposed to rest."
Muyters further insisted that this issue should be regarded completely separately from any contaminating political affiliations for or against Israeli government policy, and that it is in fact a cross-political humanitarian issue, as he wrote "one does not need to take a stand on the Israeli-Palestinian question to find the events of September 1972 heinous."

EJP