“The United States will host the 2028 Summer Olympics, one of the most prominent international sports events of the 21st century,” proclaims President Trump. “This extraordinary occasion offers a powerful opportunity to showcase American strength, pride, and patriotism while welcoming the world to our shores. The Federal Government will lead a unified effort to ensure maximum safety, secure borders, and world-class transportation for millions of visitors throughout the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
President Trump will head the task force on the 2028 games, and he actually understates the possibilities at hand. The president has the best – and probably the last – opportunity to reverse one of the biggest rip-offs of the USA in Olympic history, and possibly all of sports. As he restores American gold, President Trump could also revive memories of those same Olympics where “maximum safety” was not ensured, with deadly consequences.
For the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the USA fielded a men’s basketball team of Mike Bantom, Jim Brewer, Tom Burleson, Doug Collins, Kenny Davis, James Forbes, Tom Henderson, Bobby Jones, Dwight Jones, Kevin Joyce, Tom McMillen and Ed Ratleff. All collegians and the youngest team ever, the Americans faced a more experienced Soviet team, for all practical purposes a professional squad.
In the closing seconds with the USA behind 49-48, Illinois State’s Doug Collins picked off a Soviet pass and drove for a layup. The USSR’s Zurab Sakandelidze rammed Collins into the basket stand, a flagrant foul for which he should have been ejected but wasn’t. Collins lay motionless but after some tense moments arose, stepped to line, and the sank both free throws to put the USA ahead 50-49. Three seconds remained and the Soviets failed to score. The buzzer sounded and the Americans celebrated their victory. But then Renato William Jones, Secretary General of FIBA, the international basketball organization, came out of the stands and ordered the officials to put three seconds back on the clock.
Jones, a friend of the Soviet Union, had no authority to make such a demand but the Olympic officials duly caved. They put time back on the clock not once, not twice, but three times. The third time the Soviets scored a basket and the Olympic officials gave them the gold medal. The Americans decided not to show up for the silver because they had won the gold fair and square. Jones didn’t think so. “The Americans have to learn how to lose,” he famously proclaimed, “even when they think they are right.”
The Americans regained the gold in 1976 but by then the 1972 theft had become official and gutless American officials have since passed up every chance to restore the win. In the meantime, more than a few Olympic athletes have had to return gold medals due to doping scandals. In 2017, for example, the International Olympic Committee found that in 2008 Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter, teammate of Usain Bolt, had violated anti-doping rules. Therefore, the entire Jamaican 4×100-meter relay team would have to return their gold medals, which now belong to the team from Trinidad.
In the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, American Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon. Those medals were taken away when it emerged that, prior to the games, Thorpe had played minor league baseball, not even an Olympic sport. In July of 2022 on the 110th anniversary of the Jim Thorpe’s 1912 wins, the International Olympic Committee restored Thorpe’s gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon.
With the exception of Dwight Jones and Jim Forbes, the 1972 American basketball team is still around. President Trump, who loves to win and hates rip-offs, should demand that the Americans get the gold medals they won fair and square in Munich. As the president will remember, at those games, Islamic terrorists of the Black September group murdered Israeli athletes David Berger, Ze’ev Friedman, Yossef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, Amitsur Shapira, Yossef Romano and Moshe Weinberg. The terrorists also mutilated the weightlifter Romano, an atrocity not revealed until 2015.
In 2017 came news that “Grandson of Munich Massacre Terrorist Is Running for Congress,” in California. The candidate was Ammar Campa-Najjar, grandson of Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, and son of Palestinian Authority official Yasser Najjar, a fugitive after the Munich attack. Ammar claims his father “migrated from the Middle East to America on a student visa,” met a Mexican-American lady named Abigail and raised a family in San Diego county, but there’s a problem.
Back in 2003, Linda Gradstein of National Public Radio interviewed Yasser Najjar at his office in Gaza. Yasser was married with four children but his wife and children were not named. Yasser’s son Ammar claims his family moved from San Diego to Gaza, where he lived from ages eight to twelve, a “very Obamaesque, Dreams of Your Father situation,” as he told Rolling Stone. Sure enough, the former Barry Soetoro, raised in Indonesia, took a shine to him.
In 2012 Ammar served as deputy regional field director for Obama’s reelection campaign, followed by a position in the Obama White House. If any American journalist, politician, or intelligence official knew about the terrorist connection they did not go public.
As La Prensa San Diego revealed, the candidate once went by the name Ammar Yasser Najjar and only changed it to Ammar “Campa-Najjar” when he ran for Congress as a Palestinian Arab-American, a Mexican-Palestinian American and other variations. Billed as a “rockstar Democratic candidate” by Rolling Stone, Najjar ran as a progressive in 2018 and a moderate conservative in 2020, losing to Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa, respectively.
In 2022, the Mexican-Palestinian ran for mayor of Chula Vista and lost to Republican John McAnn. The Munich terrorist’s grandson has now joined the U.S. Navy. The Palestinian Arab-American is doubtless planning a future run for office, billed as a proud veteran. In the meantime, the Trump administration should look into Yasser Najjar’s student visa and immigration records – if they don’t have an existential problem.
The All4Palestine site profiles Yasser al-Najjar as a resident of “Palestine,” an ambassador to Norway, Iceland and Albania. No mention of any move to San Diego, and his photo is blacked out. Yasser al-Najjar was “retired” in 2018, the same year his son ran for Congress. If anybody thought he was a fake and a plant it would be hard to blame them, and the past should never be forgotten.
As in 1972, the 2028 Olympics will be a target-rich environment for terrorists, tyrants and criminals worldwide. President Trump’s Olympic task force must prevent any attack, particularly one like the massacre of 11 Israelis in Munich. The victorious 1972 Americans must get their gold medals, but the nation should also be looking ahead.
The games will take place in the run-up to the presidential election on November 7, 2028. That day, the only people who run for office, and the only people who vote, should be legitimate citizens and legal immigrants, with all identities verified beyond any doubt. Restoration of the rule of law and secure elections will be the biggest win for America moving forward.
