June 7, 2012

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed a resolution urging the International Olympic Committee to honor the Munich 11 with a moment of silence at the 2012 London Olympics.

The non-binding resolution, which was sponsored by Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), was the latest action by Congress to call on the IOC to honor the 11 Israeli athletes who were taken hostage and murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the 1972 Munich Olympics. 

Members have drafted letters to IOC President Jacques Rogge urging the committee to reconsider its decision to not hold a moment of silence on the 40th anniversary of the Munich killings during the opening ceremony of the London Games. 

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, released a statement following the committee’s passage of the resolution in which she called the IOC’s refusals to hold a moment of silence “indefensible.”

“A minute of silence would be a small, well-deserved and overdue tribute to the brave Olympians and police officer who lost their lives,” she said in the statement.

During a rescue attempt to free the hostages, the Palestinian terrorists killed nine Israeli athletes and one West German police offer. Two Israelis were killed in their rooms during the initial hostage-taking siege.

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