1972 Summer Olympics medal table invitation and threatened to boycott the Games. Three days before the opening ceremonies the IOC voted to rescind their invitation and exclude the Rhodesian athletes. The Games were largely overshadowed by what has come to be known as the Munich massacre. On September 5 a group of eight Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September Organization broke into the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes, coaches and officials hostage in their apartments. Two of the hostages who resisted were killed in the first moments of the break-in; the subsequent standoff in the Olympic Village lasted for almost 18 hours.
Palestine at the 2012 Summer Olympics of 1972 Munich Massacre victim Andrei Spitzer, has requested prior to every Olympic games since those of 1972 that the International Olympic Committee hold a moment of silence during the opening ceremonies to remember the eleven victims of the massacre. However, the IOC has denied all of these requests. As the London 2012 games would be the 40th anniversary of the Munich tragedy, Spitzer spearheaded an online petition for a moment of silence during the games' opening ceremonies, which garnered over 100,000 signatures. Again, however, the IOC denied the request, committee chairman Jacques Rogge affording that "the Opening Ceremony is