The same antisemitism: Israeli athletes face 2024 Paris Olympics under threat - opinion

The 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre was a moment in history that evokes profound devastation and Jewish trauma. With the recent targeting, threats, and harassment of Israeli athletes leading up to the Paris Olympics, it is evident that in 2024, nothing has changed since those horrific games.

The Munich Olympics were nicknamed die Heiteren Spiele, “the Happy Games,” attempting to overcome the specter of Germany’s previous Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936. Instead, Jewish people around the world witnessed the murder of their athletes on live television while 900 million viewers watched and did nothing. The world failed us, Germany failed us, and Palestinian terrorists slaughtered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches.

Much like October 7, the Munich massacre demonstrated that cruelty and inhumanity toward Jewish people knows no bounds. Even more disheartening is that this atrocity did not affect the rest of the Olympics; it was business as usual. Despite knowing that Palestinian terrorists were holding Israeli athletes hostage and slaughtering them, Avery Brundage, the president of the Olympic Committee, declared that the games must go on. The parallels between this and October 7 are uncanny.

The Olympic Committee’s indifference was further highlighted in 2012 when they flatly rejected an Israeli call for a minute’s silence at the London Games to mark the 40th anniversary of the massacre. Instead of sending a clear message that this barbaric act should never have happened at a sporting event, the Olympic Committee treated the massacre as an internal Israeli matter.

It wasn’t until 2021, at the Tokyo Olympic Games, that a moment of silence was held at an opening ceremony in memory of the Israeli athletes and coaches murdered at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Now, in 2024, the Paris Olympics are forcing Jews and Israelis to hide, once again, by hosting the memorial ceremony for the 1972 Israeli victims in secret. Due to concerns of heightened antisemitism, the ceremony, initially supposed to be held at Paris City Hall, was canceled. Instead, a smaller ceremony with fewer attendees will take place at the Olympic Village in a secret location. While the organizers publicly deny this and blame the cancellation on a logistical issue, it is clear that they fear that a larger, more public ceremony will become a target for violence.

Why must Jewish athletes hide?

Would any other group of victims be expected to hide when they honor their dead? Why are Jews supposed to hide who they are and minimize their memorial ceremonies because of antisemitism? Imagine if Ukrainians or Taiwanese people were forced to hide and could not be public about their identities at an event like the Olympics, where they should be most proud?

It has become too easy to force Jews to accept these standards, instead of agencies and leaders standing up for the values they claim to uphold. Yet here we are again, and Israeli athletes are about to face what could be the most antisemitic Olympic Games since 1936. The Berlin Games represented the peak of Hitler’s power, where antisemitic propaganda was rampant, much like the propaganda we see today.

The Israeli Olympic delegation for Paris 2024 has received death threats and hateful messages. Fifteen athletes received identical death threats via email in broken Hebrew, threatening to kill them if they arrived in France. The threats weren’t just for the athletes; the anonymous sender wrote that they would harm “any Israeli presence at the Olympics.” The harasser threatened to repeat the Munich massacre and warned the athletes to “Prepare for the intifada!”

Over the weekend, judoka Peter Paltchik, who will hold the Israeli team’s flag at the opening ceremony, and swimmer Meiron Cheruti both received creepy emails with an “invitation” to their own funerals. Cheruti’s message read: “You are welcome to attend the funeral of Meiron Amir Cheruti, born on 19/10/1997, died on 27/07/2024,” sent along with the location of the “funeral.”

Then there is the Adidas and Bella Hadid scandal, which is so completely tone-deaf and arguably intentional, by a company with an antisemitic history. Using a Palestinian who has glorified terrorism and whitewashed the crimes of Hamas to represent the campaign of the 1972 shoe only exacerbated the difficult time for Israeli athletes. It was so calculated and perfectly antisemitic that it is hard to believe it was a simple mistake (at best, their marketing staff are too incompetent to search on Google). You would think that Adidas would have learned from the last antisemite they hired (Kanye West), who cost them over $250 million after his antisemitic, Hitler-supporting tirade.

It’s hard to believe that this is the state of antisemitism in 2024, and yet, here we are.

The motto for the Olympics is “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together,” but that motto cannot truly become a reality if Jews and Israelis have to hide.

The writer is a social media activist with over 10 years of experience working for Israeli and Jewish causes and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.