With my departure for Munich, Germany fast approaching, I’m relieved to finally have a place to hang my Lederhosen! The Munich Student Union randomly assigned me to the former Olympic Village from the Munich Olympics in 1972. Needless to say, I’m elated! It’s not every day that you get to live in an Olympic Village, after all.
In the days since, hours of research, planning, and preparations for living in such a historic locale have given me pause for thought. It’s forty years since extremists took eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage right around the corner from my new doorstep. It begs the question: would you be surprised if such a religiously and ideologically motivated massacre happened today?
One need only glance at the most recent headlines to see that the world is coming down from it’s London Olympic high; as autumn approaches, the spirit of international camaraderie and sportsmanship is dropping with the mercury. The Arab world is no exception. Civil war rages in Syria leaving over 25,000 dead, with no end in sight. Iraq sentenced its vice-president to death in absentia for alleged murder. The Yemeni defense minister recently survived an assassination attempt, unfortunately the American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, did not. Pakistan has jailed a mentally handicapped pre-teen for blasphemy (a setup likely fabricated by a cleric himself). Isreal and Iran throw around the words “war” and “nukes” as casually as if they were playing Risk. It certainly seems to me that the answer to the question “Would you be surprised if it happened again?” is a sobering “No”.
We must thank the British for successfully executing a safe and secure 2012 Games. Perhaps the Olympisches Dorf is now one of the most coveted student housing assignments in the city, know for character-filled bungalows, and a village-like community atmosphere. But, the crisis that the world watch unfold on live television forty years ago is not as foreign or buried in the past as the time elapsed might suggest. It strikes me a something I wouldn’t be surprised to read about in tomorrow’s paper. Clearly, we as a global community have our work cut out for us. Given that I am coming to Germany to study “Religion and Politics”, the Olympic Village sets an awesome yet somber backdrop reminding me of both the scale and significance of the work yet to be done.
