Thomas Bach, the new German elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will resign Monday from all his other positions, news reports said.
Among the positions that the German former fencer will be leaving is head of Ghorfa, the controversial Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry which is promoting the boycott of Israel. Established by the Arab States in the 1980s, it helps German companies ensure that their products meet the import requirements of Arab governments, some of which ban products and services from Israel.
It issues discriminatory certificates camouflaging the boycott of Israel were banned as illegal by the German government over twenty years ago.
“I will resign from most of my activities, of course,” Bach as reported as saying.
Bach, a 59-year-old former Adidas executive, who joined the IOC in 1991, will replace Belgian Jacques Rogge to become the organisation's ninth president.
In a letter to Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP), Wilfried Lemke, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, called for Bach to be pressed to resign from Ghofa.
In his letter, Samuels also said that ‘’even more significant, as IOC Vice-President, Bach reportedly argued for the denial of a moment of silence in honour of the eleven Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Munich, forty years earlier."
The letter charged that, "for Holocaust survivors and sports enthusiasts, Bach’s apparent support for those who would harm the Jewish state raises the spectres of another Olympics—in Nazi Berlin in1936".
The IOC under Jacques Rogge last year repeatedly rejected calls from Jewish organizations and Israel to hold a moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games in London for the 11 Israeli athletes who were murdered during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Rogge claimed that the opening ceremony was ‘’not fit’’ to remember the Munich Massacre.
After the IOC’s refusal, even when presented with a petition by the widows of two of the victims,a memorial ceremony for the 11 Israelis was held in London on the sidelines of the games.
Bach’s candidacy came under criticism in Germany in recent weeks for its strong support by Arab leaders.