Gold Medalist Aly Raisman Honors Memory Of Slain Israeli Athletes

Aly Raisman single-handedly did what the International Olympic Committee refused to do: invoked the memory of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Summer Games.

Olympic officials have refused to even to consider a simple moment of silence at the opening ceremony or at another point in the 2012 London Olympics for the Israelis killed by terrorists 40 years ago in Munich, Germany.

Aly Raisman, who won the gold medal yesterday in the women’s individual floor exercise at the London Olympics to the tune of the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila,” paid tribute to their memory, however.

Here’s what Aly Raisman had to say about the Israeli athletes murdered 40 years ago according to the New York Post:

“Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” an emotional but poised Raisman told reporters after her performance.

“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”

If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”

The Post adds that Raisman deserves a lot of credit for addressing a subject that Olympic officials tired to squash:

“Raisman finished first in the women’s floor exercise, but she deserves to have another medal draped around her neck for having the chutzpah to face the world and do what needed to be done and say what needed to be said …”

“Were it not for young Aly and her wedding dance/bat mitzvah accompaniment, the Munich dead may have never gotten their due.”

As The Inquisitr has previously reported, the history-making performance by Aly Raisman, of Needham, Mass., gives the U.S. a first-ever gold medal in the woman’s individual floor exercise. Raisman also won gold in London as a member of the women’s gymnastic team–the first top Olympic finish in that event for the U.S. since 1996.