Olympics' 'Munich Massacre' remembered

Dignitaries gathered in Manhattan on Friday to protest the International Olympic Committee's decision not to honor the Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists 40 years ago with a moment of silence.

Having such a moment during opening ceremonies of the London Olympics would have been "a gentle, peaceful and elegant way to remember the past," said Avi Melamed, 68, of upstate Peekskill, a swimmer on that 1972 Israeli Olympic team.

Melamed said he was saddened that the request to remember the so-called "Munich Massacre" had been ignored.

A number of U.S. officials and dignitaries, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged the IOC to mark the 40th anniversary of the tragedy.

"I woke up to gunshots," Melamed said outside the Israeli Consulate on 42nd Street and Second Avenue, recalling the moment Palestinian terrorists calling themselves Black September stormed the area housing Israeli athletes.

"It was confusing and alarming," he said. "I could not believe that the Olympics became a battlefield with screams."

The hostage situation ended with the terrorists killing 11 Israeli athletes and a West German police officer, and with five of the eight terrorists slain and the rest arrested.

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There was a brief remembrance of the massacre during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, where a bombing killed one and injured 111.

Then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch spoke of the bombing in a closing ceremonies speech in Atlanta, adding: "Our thoughts also go back to the tragedy of Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes were killed during the Olympic Games in 1972."

Earlier this week, the head of the Olympic Committee for the Palestinian Authority, Jabril Rajoub, praised the IOC decision not to have a moment of silence.

Rajoub sent IOC president Jacque Rogge a thank-you note that read, in part: "Sport is a bridge for love, unification and for spreading peace among the nations. It must not be a cause for divisiveness and for the spreading of racism."

On Friday, the consulate general of Israel in New York, Ido Aharoni, sharply disagreed.

Remembering the moment in 1972 when news broke that all 11 of the Israeli hostages had been killed, Aharoni said: "We will never forget when we heard those words 'they are all gone.' We will never forget those words."

Rep. Charles Rangel, speaking at the protest Friday hours before the opening ceremony, also decried the IOC decision. "It's shocking that the International Committee could not take the time to remember," he said.

With Maria Alvarez

and John Jeansonne