“Munich 72”: breathtaking tension, it’s just a shame it’s at our expense

by time news

“Munich 72”, Hot 8, “Munich 72: Blood in the Olympics”, Yes Doku

The Palestinian terrorist act at the Munich Olympics, exactly 50 years ago, was a precise snooker for the Israeli chin. In one day of broadcasts, half a billion television viewers around the world got to know the so-called “Palestinian problem” in the Hot 8 series and the Bis Docu movie, which were broadcast this week on the 50th anniversary of the terrorist act and the murder of the 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The action in Munich was a precise Palestinian snooker to the Israeli center. The squad did not arrive , as in many other cases, with the aim of killing for the sake of killing.

If anything then the opposite. The mastermind behind the operation, Muhammad Daoud Odeh, is Abu Daoud, one of the founders of the Black September organization, ordered the members of the squad not to kill, unless they were attacked. He ordered them to drag out negotiations for hours, gain world attention, and then take off from Germany with the hostages to an Arab country.

Abu Dawud’s plan worked perfectly. An estimated half a billion people around the world watched the telecast of the drama in the Munich Olympic Village. It was a communications school at its peak. The Palestinians were admittedly in the role of terrorists, but also members of a people who, according to their version, are under a brutal occupation, and driven by their desperation to extreme acts of this kind.

The death of the athletes in the poor German rescue operation, at the end of the drama, was almost marginal in the medium and long term – except for their families and the State of Israel of course. The spin stood firm and strong on its feet. The term “Occupied and oppressed Palestinian people” entered the conversation in coffee shops and living rooms around the world. Even in Germany there was no shock from an earthquake. The Olympic games continued as planned. The policemen who were supposed to hide in the terrorists’ plane and attack them abandoned their positions and left and were not punished for it. And the chief of the Munich police, who was responsible for planning the operation and carrying it out, did not give any judgment on its failure. If anything, on the contrary. Not long after, he was promoted to the position of commander of the Federal Police of Germany as a whole.

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The grief and shock remain the lot of the State of Israel alone. The operations to eliminate the Palestinian terrorists carried out by the Mossad in the years that followed were not aimed at revenge as it is generally accepted to think. In Israel, they immediately understood the changing international security reality, the physical and media power of terrorist acts, and the decision made by the Golda Meir government already on the same night when the athletes were murdered was to eliminate all those belonging to the infrastructure of the Palestinian terrorist organizations. One by one, terrorist leaders were eliminated throughout Europe and in Lebanon, with Israel openly taking responsibility for only a few of the actions. With high self-confidence, Mossad agents moved around Europe, shot, planted explosives, detonated, left behind a trail of bleeding corpses, and slipped back to where they had slipped.

It was the self-confidence that swelled to excessive dimensions that was at the mercy of the Mossad agents finally, in the failed assassination operation in Lillehammer in Norway. A hapless Moroccan waiter named Ahmed Bushiki was mistakenly identified as Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the leaders of the Black September organization, and his killing was only the first step in a careless chain of mistakes that led to the capture of part of the killer squad. One Israeli agent, out of claustrophobic anxiety, “poured” into the ears of the Norwegian security services a great deal of valuable information about the Mossad’s hiding apartments throughout Europe, the location of weapons and methods of operation, which led to raids by security services across the continent and a major loss of professional competence for the Mossad. This was the signal to the end of the operation against the members of Black September, who in any case greatly underestimated their activities following the beatings they received.

The film and the series were broadcast this week, and of the two the one made in the more interesting way is “Munich 72: Blood in the Olympics”. The film was written by the two journalists Mark Dugin and Yossi Melman. It speaks in three voices played by three actors: the voice of Abu Daoud, the planner of the action, the voice of Manfred Schreiber, the chief of the Munich police who conducted the negotiations and the hasty and failed rescue operation, and the voice of Zvi Zamir, the head of the Mossad at the time who was sent to Munich on the orders of Golda Meir and was received with a sour face and a visible reluctance to accept his help. The viewer of the film is guaranteed interest. He is also guaranteed that the 50 years that have passed since then do not dull the rage.

See or give up: See. A breathtaking thriller, it’s just a shame it’s at our expense.

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