Thomas Bach, who was last week elected president of the
International Olympic Committee, will resign Monday from all his other
positions, according to sports website Inside the Games.
Among the positions that the German former fencer will be
vacating is head of Ghorfa, the controversial Arab-German Chamber of Commerce
and Industry.
According to the American Jewish Committee, Ghorfa helps
German companies ensure that their products meet the import requirements of
Arab governments, some of which ban products and services from Israel.
“I will resign from most of my activities, of course,” he
told Inside the Games.
“On Monday will be the first step when I resign as president
of DOSB,” Bach said, referring to the German Olympic Sports Confederation.
“Then I will also resign from the presidency of the Arab-German Chamber. I will
resign from my major professional activities.”
Bach decided to resign from his other positions before it
was announced that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had written to the United
Nations to urge him to step down from Ghorfa, which they say is an anti-Jewish
organization.
Bach, who most recently served as IOC vice president, won a
fencing gold medal in the team foil in 1976 before entering sports marketing
and politics.
He supported the refusal of the IOC, led by Jacques Rogge, to
hold a moment of silence during the 2012 Summer Olympics for the 40th
anniversary of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at
the 1972 Munich Games.
Bach’s candidacy came under criticism in Germany in recent
weeks for its strong support by Arab leaders. But Charlotte Knobloch, president
of the Jewish Community of Bavaria and former head of the Central Council of
Jews in Germany, said in a statement that Bach “stands for central values such
as tolerance, fairness — sportsmanship in the best sense of the word — and
cosmopolitanism.”
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