Haveil Havalim
Was there no element of vengeance in the decision to take action against the terrorists? No. We were not engaged in vengeance. We are accused of having been guided by a desire for vengeance. That is nonsense. What we did was to concretely prevent terrorism in the future. We acted against those who thought that they would continue to perpetrate acts of terror. I am not saying that those who were involved in Munich were not marked for death. They definitely deserved to die. But we were not dealing with the past; we concentrated on the future. Did you not receive a directive from Golda Meir along the lines of “take revenge on those responsible for Munich”? Golda abhorred the necessity that was imposed on us to carry out the operations. Golda never told me to ‘take revenge on those who were responsible for Munich.’ No one told me that.[23]
Thirty Five years ago, I sat enthralled as the most elite of the world's athletes assembled in the German town of Munich.
To me growing up in the seventies was a time of wondrous excitement, I was young, carefree, and living the seventies experience as only those that lived it will understand.
My father worked for the Newspaper and he often brought home photos and supplements that had been handed out to the staff.
Till this day I remember the dread shown on my fathers face during the Munich Olympics, I was too young to fully comprehend the terrible events at that time but I do remember feeling some pain as I watched a grieve stricken woman poor her heart out over her husbands death.
At a time the world chose to celebrate its diversity, in a theme of unity by staging an ancient ttradition known as the Olympic games, the Olympics really meant something then. There had been the odd instance of political grandstanding but the world seem to stop its hatred and a sense of positivism seemed to encircle most parts of the world.
Instead of rejoicing in peace and happiness some Palestinians lead by Yasser Arafat(remember he was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Hypocrisy) decided that they would bring the shadow of death to what was truly an inspiring world event.
From the 'free dictionary'
The Munich Massacre
The Munich massacre occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the Palestinian organization Black September, a militant group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization.[1] By the end of the ordeal the hostage-takers had killed eleven Israeli athletes and one German police officer. Five of the eight hostage-takers were killed by police during an abortive rescue attempt. The three surviving captured hostage-takers were later released by Germany, following the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner. The massacre was followed by Israeli air strikes and a series of Israeli revenge assassinations of the principal planners.
Simon Reeve writes that the attack was one of the most significant terrorist incidents of recent times, one that “thrust the Palestinian crimes into the world spotlight, set the tone for decades of conflict in the Middle East, and launched a new era of international terrorism”.[2]The days before
The 1972 Munich Olympic Games were well into their second week and a joyous time by most accounts. The West German Olympic Organizing Committee had encouraged an open and friendly atmosphere in the Olympic Village in order to erase memories of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, misused by Adolf Hitler for propaganda purposes, and the militaristic image of pre-World War II Germany. As shown in the documentary film One Day in September, Village security was deliberately lax, and athletes often came and went from the Village without presenting proper ID. Many simply bypassed security checkpoints and climbed over the chain-link fence surrounding the Village. There were no armed security guards anywhere, which had worried Shmuel Lalkin, the head of the Israeli delegation, even before his team arrived in Munich. In interviews with journalists Serge Groussard and Aaron Klein later used for their books, Lalkin said that he had also expressed concern about his team's placement in a relatively isolated part of the Olympic Village, in a small building close to a gate, which he felt made his team particularly vulnerable to an outside assault. The German authorities assured Lalkin that extra security would look after the Israeli team, but Lalkin said later that he doubts that this ever occurred.
The significance of a team from Israel participating in an Olympic Games held in Germany was not lost on anyone - it was only 27 years after the end of World War II, and the horrors of the Holocaust were still fresh in many peoples' minds. Many of the members of the Israeli team had lost relatives in the Holocaust, but those who were interviewed looked to the Games as a way to make a statement of defiance to the murderers of the past and to show the resilience of the Jewish people. The Olympic facilities were less than ten miles from the site of the Dachau concentration camp, which the Israeli team visited just prior to the opening of the Games. Ironically, fencing coach Andre Spitzer was chosen to lay a wreath at the concentration camp.
For background on Black September and its motivations for the assault on the Israeli Olympic team, see the appropriate article or see Palestine Liberation Organization.The hostage-taking
According to news sources, the Israeli athletes had enjoyed a night out on September 4, 1972, watching a performance of Fiddler on the Roof before returning to the Olympic Village. Fortunately, Lalkin denied his 13-year-old son permission to spend the night in the weightlifters' apartment, a decision that would save the boy's life. At 4:30 a.m. local time on September 5, as the athletes slept, eight tracksuit-clad Black September members carrying duffel bags loaded with guns and grenades scaled a two-metre chain-link fence with the assistance of unsuspecting American athletes who were also sneaking into the Olympic Village. Once inside, the terrorists used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystraße.
Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, was awakened by a faint scratching noise at the door of Apartment 1, which housed the Israeli coaches and officials. When he investigated, he saw the door begin to open and masked men with guns on the other side. He shouted a warning to his sleeping roommates and threw his nearly 300 lb (135 kg) weight against the door to try to stop the intruders from forcing their way inside. Gutfreund's actions gave his roommate, weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, enough time to smash a window and escape. Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg fought back against the intruders, who shot him through his cheek and then forced him to help them find more hostages. Leading the kidnappers past Apartment 2, Weinberg told the terrorists that the residents of the apartment were not Israelis. The apartment actually housed the Israeli shooters and fencers and a track athlete. Instead, Weinberg led them to Apartment 3, where the terrorists corralled six wrestlers and weightlifters as additional hostages. Weinberg probably thought that the larger and stronger men there would have a better chance of overpowering the intruders.
As the athletes from Apartment 3 were marched back to the coaches’ apartment, the wounded Weinberg again attacked the kidnappers, allowing one of his wrestlers, Gad Tsobari, to escape via the underground parking garage.[3] The burly Weinberg knocked one of the intruders unconscious and slashed another with a fruit knife before being shot to death. Weightlifter Yossef Romano, a veteran of the Six-Day War and father of three young daughters , also attacked and wounded one of the intruders before being shot and killed.
The terrorists were left with nine living hostages (see above photograph). Gutfreund, physically the largest of the hostages, was bound to a chair (Groussard describes him as being tied up like a mummy). The rest were lined up four apiece on the two beds in Spitzer and Shorr’s room and tied at the wrists and ankles, then to each other. The bullet-riddled corpse of Romano was left at the feet of his tied-up comrades as a warning.
Of the other members of Israel's team, race-walker Dr. Shaul Ladany had been jolted awake in Apartment 2 by Gutfreund’s screams and escaped by jumping off a balcony and running through the rear garden of the building. The other four residents of Apartment 2 (marksmen Henry Hershkowitz and Zelig Stroch and fencers Dan Alon and Moshe Yehuda Weinstain), plus Lalkin and the two team doctors, managed to hide and later fled the besieged building. Two Israeli sailors were in Kiel, 500 miles away from Munich. The two female members of Israel's Olympic team, sprinter and hurdler Esther Shachamarov and swimmer Shlomit Nir, were housed in a separate part of the Olympic Village inaccessible to the terrorists.Black September and their demands
The terrorists were subsequently reported to be members of the Palestinian fedayeen who were from refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. They were identified as Luttif Afif (“Issa”), the leader (three of Issa’s brothers were also reportedly members of Black September, two of them in Israeli jails), his deputy Yusuf Nazzal (“Tony”), and junior members Afif Ahmed Hamid (“Paolo”), Khalid Jawad (“Salah”), Ahmed Chic Thaa (“Abu Halla”), Mohammed Safady (“Badran”), Adnan Al-Gashey (“Denawi”), and his cousin Jamal Al-Gashey (“Samir”). According to Simon Reeve, Afif, Nazzal and one of their confederates had all worked in various capacities in the Olympic Village, and had spent a couple of weeks scouting out their potential target. A member of the Uruguayan Olympic delegation, which shared housing with the Israelis, claims that he found Nazzal actually inside 31 Connollystraße less than 24 hours before the attack, but since he was recognized as a worker in the Village, nothing was thought of it at the time. The other members of the hostage-taking group entered Munich via train and plane in the days before the attack. All of the members of the Uruguay and Hong Kong Olympic teams, which also shared the building with the Israelis, were released unharmed during the crisis.
The terrorists demanded the release and safe passage to Egypt of 234 Palestinians and non-Arabs jailed in Israel, along with two German prisoners, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, who were founders of the German Red Army Faction. The hostage-takers threw the body of Weinberg out the front door of the residence to demonstrate their resolve. Israel's response was immediate and absolute: there would be no negotiation. Some claim that the German authorities, under the leadership of Chancellor Willy Brandt and Minister for the Interior Hans-Dietrich Genscher rejected Israel’s offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany[4]. The Bavarian interior minister Bruno Merk, who headed the crisis centre jointly with Genscher and Munich's police chief Manfred Schreiber, denies that such an Israeli offer ever existed.[5] However, the German police who took part in the attempted rescue operation had no special training in hostage crisis operations.
According to journalist John K. Cooley, the hostage situation presented an extremely difficult political situation for the Germans because the hostages were Jewish. Cooley reported that the Germans offered the Palestinians an unlimited amount of money for the release of the athletes, as well as the substitution of high-ranking Germans. However, the terrorists refused both offers.[6]
Munich police chief Manfred Schreiber and Ahmed Touni, head of the Egyptian Olympic team, negotiated directly with the kidnappers, repeating the offer of an unlimited amount of money. According to Cooley, the reply was that “money means nothing to us; our lives mean nothing to us.” The Tunisian and Libyan ambassadors to Germany also helped try to win concessions from the kidnappers, but to no avail. However, the negotiators apparently were able to convince the kidnappers that their demands were being considered, as Issa granted a total of five extensions to their deadlines. Elsewhere in the village athletes carried on as normal, seemingly oblivious to the events unfolding nearby. The Games continued until mounting pressure on the International Olympic Committee forced a suspension nearly 12 hours after the first athlete had been murdered.
A small squad of German police was dispatched to the Olympic village. Dressed in Olympic sweatsuits and carrying machine guns, these were members of the German border-police, untrained in counter-terrorist response, and without specific operational plans in place for the rescue. The police took up positions awaiting orders that never came.
In the meantime, camera crews filmed the actions of the police from German apartments, and broadcast the images live to television. The terrorists were therefore able to watch the police as they prepared to attack. Footage shows the terrorists leaning over to look at the police who were in hiding on the roof. In the end, after Issa threatened to kill two of the hostages, the police left the premises.
At one point during the crisis, the negotiators demanded direct contact with the hostages in order to satisfy themselves that the Israelis were still alive. Fencing coach Andre Spitzer, who spoke fluent German, and shooting coach Kehat Shorr, the senior member of the Israeli delegation, had a brief conversation with Schreiber and Genscher while standing at the second-floor window of the besieged building, with two kidnappers holding guns on them. When Spitzer attempted to answer a question regarding the number of hostages and terrorists, the coach was pistol-whipped in full view of international television cameras and pulled away from the window. A few minutes later, Genscher and Walter Tröger, the mayor of the Olympic Village, were briefly allowed into the apartments and spoke with the hostages. Tröger spoke of being very moved by the dignity with which the Israelis held themselves, and that they seemed resigned to their fate.[6] He also noticed that several of the hostages, especially Gutfreund, showed signs of having suffered physical abuse at the hands of the kidnappers, and that David Berger had been shot in his left shoulder.Failed rescue
After more than half a day of intense negotiations, the terrorists demanded transportation to Cairo. The authorities feigned agreement, and at 10:10 p.m. a bus carried the terrorists and their hostages from 31 Connollystraße to two military helicopters, which transported them to nearby Fürstenfeldbruck airbase, where a Boeing 727 aircraft was waiting. Initially, the terrorists had wanted to go to Riem, the international airport near Munich, but the negotiators convinced them that Fürstenfeldbruck would be more practical. The authorities, who preceded the Black Septembrists and hostages in a third helicopter, had an ulterior motive: they planned an armed assault on the terrorists at the airport. A rude surprise awaited the crisis team - during the transfer from the bus to the helicopters, they discovered that despite their firmly-held belief that there were no more than four or five terrorists holding the Israelis (according to what Genscher and Tröger had seen inside 31 Connollystraße), there were actually eight.
Five German snipers had been chosen to ambush the kidnappers. All had been chosen simply because they shot competitively on weekends.[7] During a subsequent German investigation, an officer identified as “Sniper No. 2” stated: “I am of the opinion that I am not a sharpshooter.”[8] The five snipers were deployed around the airport - three on the roof of the control tower, one hidden behind a service truck and one behind a small signal tower at ground level - but none of them had any special training. The members of the crisis team - Schreiber, Genscher, Merk and Schreiber's deputy Georg Wolf - supervised and observed the attempted rescue from the airport control tower. Cooley, Reeve and Groussard all place Mossad chief Zvi Zamir and Victor Cohen, one of Zamir's senior assistants, at the scene as well, but as observers only. Zamir has stated repeatedly in interviews over the years that he was never consulted by the Germans at any time during the rescue attempt, and that he actually thought that his presence made the Germans uncomfortable.
A Boeing 727 jet was positioned on the tarmac, with five or six selected armed German police inside, dressed as flight crew. They were to overpower the terrorists who would inspect the plane, and give the German snipers a chance to kill the terrorists remaining at the helicopters. At the last minute, as the helicopters were arriving on the tarmac, the German police aboard the airplane voted to abandon their mission, without consulting the central command. This left only five sharpshooters to try to overpower a larger and more heavily armed group of terrorists. At that point, General Ulrich Wegener, Genscher's senior aide and later the founder of the elite German counter-terrorist unit GSG 9, said “I’m sure this will blow the whole affair!?
The helicopters landed just after 10:30 p.m., and the four pilots and six of the kidnappers emerged. While four of the Black September members held the pilots at gunpoint (breaking an agreement they had made that they would not take any Germans hostage), Issa and Tony walked over to inspect the jet, only to find it empty. Knowing they had been duped, Issa and Tony sprinted back toward the helicopters, and at approximately 11:00 pm, the German authorities gave the order to the police snipers positioned nearby to open fire.
According to Simon Reeve, the German rescue operation was a fiasco:There was instant chaos. The four German members of the chopper crews began sprinting for safety in all directions. Issa and Tony began running back towards the helicopters, as the third sniper near Wolf opened fire on them. His first shot missed, ploughing into the tarmac near Issa, who steadied himself and then began sprinting in a zigzag towards the helicopters. The sniper fired again, hitting Tony in the leg. He collapsed onto the tarmac.[8]
In the ensuing chaos, two of the kidnappers holding the chopper pilots (Ahmed Chic Thaa and Afif Ahmed Hamid) were killed, and the remaining terrorists scrambled to safety, returning fire and shooting out as many airport lights as they could from behind the helicopters, out of the snipers’ line of sight. A German policeman in the control tower, Anton Fliegerbauer, was killed by the gunfire. The helicopter pilots fled, but the hostages, who were tied up inside the craft, could not. A stalemate developed. During the gun battle, wrote Groussard, the hostages secretly worked on loosening their bonds. Teeth marks were found on some of the ropes after the gunfire had ended.
Frustrated at the Germans’ seeming indifference to the gravity of the situation, Zamir and Cohen went up on the roof of the control tower with a megaphone and tried to talk the kidnappers into surrendering. The terrorists’ reply — they fired upon the two Israelis — made it clear that the time for negotiation had long since passed.
The Germans had not arranged for armored personnel carriers ahead of time, and only then were they called in to break the deadlock. Since the roads to the airport had not been cleared, the carriers became stuck in traffic and only arrived around midnight. At four minutes past midnight of September 6, according to Cooley, one of the terrorists, likely Issa, turned on the hostages in the eastern helicopter and fired at them from point-blank range, killing Springer, Halfin, and Friedman and wounding Berger in the leg. He then pulled the pin on a hand grenade and tossed it into the helicopter, causing a tremendous explosion which destroyed the helicopter and incinerated the tied-up Israelis inside.
Issa and another terrorist then dashed across the tarmac and began firing at the police, who killed the pair with return fire. What happened to the remaining hostages is still a matter of dispute. A German police investigation indicated that one of their snipers and a few of the hostages may have been shot inadvertently by the police. However, a Time Magazine reconstruction of the long-suppressed Bavarian prosecutor’s report indicates that a third kidnapper (Reeve identifies Adnan Al-Gashey) stood at the door of the helicopter and raked the remaining five hostages with fatal gunfire; Gutfreund, Shorr, Slavin, Spitzer and Shapira were shot an average of four times each.[8] Berger would ultimately be the last hostage to die, succumbing to smoke inhalation. In some cases, the exact cause of death for the hostages in the eastern helicopter could not be established because the corpses were burned almost beyond recognition in the explosion and subsequent fire. Only Ze'ev Friedman’s body was relatively intact; he had been blown clear of the helicopter by the explosion.
Three of the remaining terrorists lay on the ground, two of them feigning death, and were captured by police. Jamal Al-Gashey had been shot through his right wrist,[8] and Mohammed Safady had sustained a flesh wound to his leg.[9] Adnan Al-Gashey had escaped injury completely. Tony, the final terrorist, escaped the scene, but was tracked down with dogs 40 minutes later to an airbase parking lot. Cornered and bombarded with tear gas, he was shot dead after a brief gunfight. By around 1:30 a.m., the battle was over.
Initial news reports, published all over the world, indicated that all the hostages were alive, and that all the terrorists had been killed. Only later did a representative for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggest that "initial reports were overly optimistic."
Jim McKay, who was covering the Olympics that year for ABC, had taken on the job of reporting the events as Roone Arledge fed them into his earpiece. After the botched rescue attempt, he came on the air with this statement:"Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages; two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone."[10]
Could the massacre have been prevented?
Author Simon Reeve, among others, writes that the shootout with the well-trained and suicidal Black September members showed an egregious lack of preparation on the part of the German authorities. They were not prepared to deal with this sort of terror situation, which led directly to the founding, less than two months later, of GSG 9. The authors cite the following mistakes:
None of the fake crew on the 727 were prosecuted or even reprimanded for what amounted to dereliction of duty and insubordination in abandoning their posts. [10] Many of the police officers and border guards who were approached for interviews by the One Day in September production team were threatened with the loss of their pensions if they talked, suggesting an attempt at cover-up by the German authorities. Many of the errors made by the Germans during the "rescue attempt" were detailed by Heinz Hohensinn, who had participated in the operation, but had taken early retirement and had no pension to lose. [10]Effect on the Games
The Olympic competition was suspended on September 5 for one full day; this had never happened before. The next day, a memorial service attended by 80,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. IOC President Avery Brundage made no reference to the murdered athletes during a speech praising the strength of the Olympic movement, which outraged many listeners.[10] The victims' families were represented by Andre Spitzer's widow Ankie, Moshe Weinberg's mother, and a cousin of Weinberg's, Carmel Eliash. During the memorial service, Eliash collapsed and died of a heart attack.
Many of the 80,000 people who filled the Olympic Stadium for West Germany’s soccer match with Hungary carried noisemakers and waved flags, but when several spectators unfurled a banner reading “17 dead, already forgotten?” security officers removed the sign and expelled the offenders from the grounds.[11]
During the memorial service, the Olympic Flag was flown at half-staff, along with the flags of most of the other competing nations, at the order of Willy Brandt. Ten Arab nations and the Soviet Union demanded their flags remain at full-staff, which Brandt accepted.[12]
Willi Daume, president of the Munich organizing committee, initially sought to cancel the remainder of the Games, but in the afternoon Brundage and others who wished to continue the Games prevailed, stating that they could not let terrorism halt the games.[11] Brundage stated “the Games must go on”, a decision endorsed by the Israeli government and Olympic team’s chief.[13]
On September 6, the Israeli team announced it would leave Munich. All Jewish sportsmen were placed under guard. Mark Spitz, the American swimming star who had already completed his competitions, was removed from Munich during the crisis for fear that, as a prominent Jew, he might be a kidnapping target. The Egyptian team left the Games on September 7, stating they feared reprisals.[14] The Philippine and Algerian teams also left the Games, as did some members of the Dutch and Norwegian teams. American marathon runner Kenny Moore, who wrote about the incident for Sports Illustrated, quoted Dutch distance runner Jos Hermans as saying, “You give a party, and someone is killed at the party, you don’t continue the party, you go home. That’s what I’m doing.?
The families of some victims have asked the IOC to establish a permanent memorial to the athletes, but the IOC has declined, saying that to introduce a specific reference to the victims could “alienate other members of the Olympic community,” according to the BBC.[15] Alex Gilady, an Israeli IOC official, told the BBC: “We must consider what this could do to other members of the delegations that are hostile to Israel.?
There is, however, a memorial outside the Olympic stadium in Munich, in the form of a stone tablet at the bridge linking the stadium to the former Olympic village. There is also a memorial tablet to the slain Israelis outside the front door of their former lodging at 31 Connollystraße. On 15 October 1999 (almost a year before the Sydney 2000 Games) a memorial plaque was unveiled in one of the large light towers (Tower 14) outside the Sydney Olympic Stadium, and remains there today.[16][17]Aftermath
On September 5, Golda Meir, then Prime Minister of Israel, appealed to other countries to “save our citizens and condemn the unspeakable criminal acts committed.”[18] The attack was widely condemned around the world, with King Hussein of Jordan calling it a “savage crime against civilization… perpetrated by sick minds.”[19] Hussein was the only leader of an Arab country to publicly denounce the Olympic attack.
The bodies of the five Palestinians — Afif, Nazzal, Chic Thaa, Hamid and Jawad — killed during the Fürstenfeldbruck gun battle were delivered to Libya, where they received heroes’ funerals and were buried with full military honors.
The German authorities imprisoned the three surviving terrorists, and soon formed the counter-terrorism unit GSG 9 to provide a more substantial hostage rescue response to future incidents.
On September 9, Israeli planes bombed Palestinian targets in Syria and Lebanon.[20]
On October 29, hijackers of a German Lufthansa passenger jet demanded the release of the three surviving terrorists who were being held for trial. Safady and the Al-Gasheys were immediately released by Germany, receiving a tumultuous welcome when they touched down in Libya and giving their own firsthand account of their operation at a press conference broadcast worldwide. In both ESPN/ABC’s documentary The Tragedy of the Munich Games and in Kevin Macdonald’s Academy Award-winning documentary One Day in September, it is claimed that the whole hijacking episode was a sham, concocted by the West Germans and Black September so that the Germans could be rid of the three Munich perpetrators. The view is that the Germans were fearful that their mishandling of the rescue attempt would be exposed to the world if the three Fürstenfeldbruck survivors had ever stood trial.[20]Operation Wrath of God and
Golda Meir and the Israeli Defense Committee secretly authorized the Mossad to track down and eliminate those responsible for the Munich massacre.[21] a claim which was disputed by Zvi Zamir, which describes this as “putting an end to the type of terror that was perpetrated” (in Europe).[22]
Operation Spring of Youth
To this end the Mossad set up a number of special teams to locate and eliminate these terrorists, aided by the agency’s stations in Europe.[23]
In February 2006, former Mossad chief in an interview[23] Zvi Zamir is answering a direct question:
The Israeli mission later became known as Operation Wrath of God or Mivtza Elohim.[23] Reeve quotes General Aharon Yariv — who, he writes, was the general overseer of the operation — as stating that after Munich the Israeli government felt it had no alternative but to exact justice.We had no choice. We had to make them stop, and there was no other way… we are not very proud about it. But it was a question of sheer necessity. We went back to the old biblical rule of an eye for an eye… I approach these problems not from a moral point of view, but, hard as it may sound, from a cost-benefit point of view. If I’m very hard-headed, I can say, what is the political benefit in killing this person? Will it bring us nearer to peace? Will it bring us nearer to an understanding with the Palestinians or not? In most cases I don’t think it will. But in the case of Black September we had no other choice and it worked. Is it morally acceptable? One can debate that question. Is it politically vital? It was.[23]
Benny Morris writes that a target list was created using information from “turned” PLO personnel and friendly European intelligence services. Once complete, a wave of assassinations of suspected Black September operatives began across Europe.
On April 9, 1973, Israel launched Operation Spring of Youth, a joint Mossad-IDF operation in Beirut. The targets were Mohammad Yusuf al-Najjar (Abu Yusuf), head of Fatah’s intelligence arm, which ran Black September, according to Morris; Kamal Adwan, who headed the PLO's so-called Western Sector, which controlled PLO action inside Israel; and Kamal Nassir, the PLO spokesman. A group of Sayeret commandos were taken in nine missile boats and a small fleet of patrol boats to a deserted Lebanese beach, before driving in two cars to downtown Beirut, where they killed Najjar, Adwan and Nassir. Two further detachments of commandos blew up the PFLP’s headquarters in Beirut and a Fatah explosives plant. The leader of the commando team that conducted the operations was Ehud Barak.
On July 21, 1973, in the so-called Lillehammer affair, a team of Mossad agents killed Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan man unrelated to the Munich attack, in Lillehammer, Norway, after an informant mistakenly said Bouchiki was Ali Hassan Salameh, the head of Force 17 and a Black September operative. Five Mossad agents, including two women, were captured by the Norwegian authorities, while others managed to slip away.[23] The five were convicted of the killing and imprisoned, but were released and returned to Israel in 1975. The Mossad later found Ali Hassan Salameh in Beirut and killed him on January 22, 1979 with a remote-controlled car bomb.
Simon Reeve writes that the Israeli revenge operations continued for more than 20 years. He details the assassination in Paris in 1992 of the PLO’s head of intelligence, and says that an Israeli general confirmed there was a link back to Munich. Reeve also writes that while Israeli officials have stated Operation Wrath of God was intended to exact vengeance for the families of the athletes killed in Munich, “few relatives wanted such a violent reckoning with the Palestinians”. Reeve states the families were instead desperate to know the truth of the events surrounding the Munich massacre. Reeve outlines what he sees as a lengthy cover-up by German authorities to hide the truth.[23] After 20 years of fighting the German government, the families acquired official documentation proving the depth of the cover-up. After a lengthy court fight, in 2003 the families of the Munich victims reached a financial settlement with the German government.
In a 2005 book reviewed by Time magazine, author Aaron J. Klein (who based his book in large part on rare interviews with key Mossad officers involved in the reprisal missions) contends that the Mossad got only one man directly connected to the massacre, Atef Bseiso, who was shot in Paris as late as 1992. The rest of the targets were unconnected or junior operatives. The operation functioned not just to punish the perpetrators of Munich but also to disrupt and deter future terrorist acts, writes Klein. “For the second goal, one dead PLO operative was as good as another.” Klein quotes a senior intelligence source: “Our blood was boiling. When there was information implicating someone, we didn’t inspect it with a magnifying glass.”[24]Surviving hostage-takers
After many years, the fate of the three Fürstenfeldbruck survivors is in dispute. It has long been claimed that both Mohammed Safady and Adnan Al-Gashey were killed by the Mossad as part of Operation Wrath of God. According to the Klein book, Adnan Al-Gashey actually died of heart failure in the 1970s, not as a result of an attack by the Israeli hit squads. Additionally, in the summer of 2004, PLO veteran Tawfiq Tirawi told Klein that his friend Mohammed Safady was "as alive as you are."[24] He did not go beyond that rather cryptic comment. No additional evidence has come to light regarding Safady's survival.
The prevailing belief is that Jamal Al-Gashey is the sole remaining hostage-taker alive today (November 2006), living underground, claiming to still fear retribution from Israeli authorities. He is the only one of the surviving terrorists to consent to interviews since 1972, having granted an interview in 1992 to a Palestinian newspaper, and having briefly emerged from hiding in 1999 to participate in an interview for the film One Day in September, during which he was disguised and his face shown only in blurry shadow.Abu Daoud
Of those believed to have planned the Munich massacre, only Abu Daoud, the man who claims that the attack was his idea, is known to be alive, and is believed to be in hiding somewhere in the Middle East or in Africa. On July 27, 1981 he was shot thirteen times from a distance of around two meters in a Warsaw Victoria (now Sofitel) hotel coffee shop, but surprisingly survived the attack. It is even said that he chased his would-be assassin down to the front entrance of the hotel before collapsing.
Abu Daoud was allowed safe passage through Israel in 1996 so he could attend a PLO meeting convened in the Gaza Strip for the purpose of rescinding an article in its charter that called for Israel’s eradication.[24]
In his autobiography, Frm Jeruslem to Munich, first published in France in 1999, and later in a written interview with Sports Illustrated,[25] Abu Daoud, now in his seventies, writes that funds for Munich were provided by Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the PLO since November 11, 2004 and President of the Palestinian National Authority since January 15, 2005.[26][27][28]Though he claims he didn’t know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack.[29]
Abu Daoud, who lives with his wife on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority, has said that “the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat,” although Arafat was not involved in conceiving or implementing the attack. In his autobiography, Daoud writes that Arafat saw the team off on the mission with the words “Allah protect you.”[30] Arafat rejected this claim.
On December 27, 2005, Mohammed Odeh (Abu Daoud) said that he had no regrets about his involvement in the Munich attack, and that Steven Spielberg's film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. Ankie Spitzer, widow of fencing coach Andre, has refused several offers of meetings with Abu Daoud, saying that the only place she wants to meet him is in a courtroom. According to Spitzer, “He [Abu Daoud] didn’t pay the price for what he did.”[31]Casualties
The seventeen people killed in the incident are listed below, arranged by affiliation. Israelis
Shot during the initial break-in:
First shot, then blown up in D-HAQO ("eastern") helicopter (seated, L-R):
Machine-gunned in D-HADU ("western") helicopter (seated, L-R): German police
Black September kidnappers
References
2. ^ Reeve, Simon. One Day in September, 2001.
3. ^ Article on CBC Archives
4. ^ Reeve, Simon. One Day in September, 2001.
5. ^ "Interview "Uns ging es darum, das Leben der Geiseln zu retten", Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 1 2006.
6. ^ Cooley
7. ^ TIME article, part 5, August 5 2002
8. ^ CBS News article on 2002 comemoration of the massacre, September 5 2002
9. ^ Groussard
10. ^ American Sportscasters Online interview with Jim McKay
11. ^ TIME article, part 6, August 5 2002
12. ^ Fleming, David (29 July 1996). Remembering the Munich 11?. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved on 2006-07-22.
13. ^ Encarta article on the Olympic Games
14. ^ Guardian article on the massacre, September 7 1972
15. ^ BBC News article on comemoration at 2004 Olympics, August 20 2004
16. ^ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs article on Sydney 2000 Olympics and Plaque
17. ^ Simon Reeve’s article in 2000: Munich massacre’s echoes heard amid Sydney’s jubilee
18. ^ Telegraph article on the massacre
19. ^ Cooley
20. ^ The Jewish Agency for Israel Timeline
21. ^ Morris
22. ^ Yossi
23. ^ “Munich: Mossad breaks cover” by Ewen MacAskill and Ian Black, The Guardian, January 26, 2006
24. ^ Dec 2005 TIME article
25. ^ Sports Illustrated on Abu Daoud
26. ^ WorldNetDaily on Mahmoud Abbas
27. ^ Israel Law Center on Abu Mazen
28. ^ Jewish Virtual Library on Mahmoud Abbas
29. ^ Daoud
30. ^ Conservative News Services on involvement of PLO in the massacre
31. ^ "Her husband’s killer", New York Times, December 25 2005.See also
Olympics with significant criminal incidents
Films
Further reading
Movies
Other resources
References:
This material is from the Free Dictionary: Munich Massacre
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