Fifty years ago this week, the whole world watched in horror as Jews were massacred again on German soil, at the Olympic Games in Munich. Joy of terrorists Members of the PLO organization, under the cover name ‘Black September’, tortured and murdered 11 Israeli athletes. They broke into the residence of the Israeli delegation, killed two on the spot and took the rest hostage. In exchange for their release, they demanded the release of 234 terrorists imprisoned in Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir refused to negotiate with them, defining the demands as extortion. She later said: “We learned the bitter lesson. Terrorism must be completely eliminated.”
Meanwhile, the German authorities offered the kidnappers safe passage and large sums of money, which they refused. In the chaos that ensued during the German attempt to ambush the terrorists at the air force base near Munich on September 6, the hijackers murdered the nine hostages, in addition to one German policeman. Three of the terrorists survived the shootout. Israeli special forces stood ready to carry out a rescue operation, but the German government did not allow them to enter the country, and did not listen to the advice of the Israeli security experts who arrived on the scene. They had to stand by while their brothers were slaughtered.
The terrorists were armed with weapons smuggled into Germany through diplomats from Libya, where the squad trained for its murderous mission. Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi financed the attack at the request of PLO leader Arafat, who denied any involvement in the attack, and two years later was received with applause at the UN General Assembly. Mahmoud Abbas, currently the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, played a central part in the preparations for the operation. He also refuses to this day to express remorse.
While the hostage crisis is at its peak, Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage has insisted on continuing with the Games. On the morning in which the first two Israelis were murdered and nine of their friends were held hostage, the first competition opened at quarter to eight exactly, in the tradition of German precision. Brandage later agreed to a 12-hour break in the game plan, and they continued as usual as if nothing had happened. “Unbelievably, they just keep going,” the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time. “It’s almost like having a dance ball in Dachau” (the concentration camp located a few kilometers away).
At a memorial service held the day after the murder, Brundage, who successfully fought against the boycott of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, tried to downplay the scale of the event that had just taken place. The German Chancellor’s request to lower the flags in the competitions to half-mast was refused, after the Arab countries strongly objected. The head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, who witnessed the events, wrote as follows:
We witnessed the Israeli athletes, their hands tied, surrounded by terrorists, as they marched together towards the helicopters. It was a terrifying sight, especially for a Jew on German soil.”
The Israeli response was not long in coming. Two days after the massacre in Munich, on September 8, Israeli warplanes bombed the organization’s bases in Syria and Lebanon, killing about two hundred terrorists. Syrian Sukhoi planes that tried to respond were intercepted by the Air Force. Later, IDF armored and infantry forces attacked another PLO base in southern Lebanon, in an operation in which about 45 terrorists were eliminated.
On September 10, a call by the UN Security Council for Israel to cease military operations, without mentioning the Munich massacre at all, fell through after an American veto, which was imposed despite vigorous protests from the USSR and China. The Soviet ambassador commented that placing the Israeli raid alongside the events in Munich “was tantamount to agreeing with the aggressive policy of the madmen from Israel.”
The American ambassador to the United Nations, George Bush Sr., said at the time that the proposed resolution ignored reality, and added that “silence in the face of the disaster in Munich” would only invite more terrorism. Referring to the issue of Palestinian violence in general, he said: “We aspire to a world where athletes They are not afraid of murderers, and passengers on airplanes do not need to be afraid of kidnappers.”
But words alone were not enough for Israel, which had to witness eleven coffins landing at the airport in Lod, while the games in Munich continue as if the murder of Jews in Europe is once again a routine and marginal event. In Golda Meir’s hands was the task of turning words into action. Her people were targeted by the terrorists.
But dealing with the threats of neighboring countries was one thing, and dealing with terrorism in Europe was quite another. Before Munich, the Israeli intelligence services regularly provided European governments with information about terrorist cells and planned attacks on their territory. Meir told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee: “We inform them once, twice, three or five times. But nothing happens.” The European reluctance to act against Palestinian terrorism and upset the Arab countries led to a wave of murderous attacks. In the three years before 1972, 16 people were killed or injured in seven attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in West Germany alone.
The Mossad previously offered to act directly against the terrorists on the continent, but Meir respected the sovereignty of European countries and limited the retaliatory actions to the Middle East. Everything changed after Munich. Six days after the murder, she told the Knesset:
Any place where a plot is hatched, where people are being prepared to kill Jews, Israelis, Jews everywhere, Israelis everywhere – there we are obliged to harm them.”
These words gave the signal for one of the most successful counter-terrorism operations the world has seen. Despite her tough stance, Meir deliberated hard, both politically and morally, before bringing the decision to the cabinet. She later said: “There is no difference between the one who kills and the one who makes the decision to send others to kill. It is exactly the same, maybe even worse.”
The Mossad had been preparing for such an operation for years, and immediately began sending elimination teams to Europe. The first operation took place less than two months after Munich, on October 16 in Rome, when the PLO representative in Italy, Vaal Zuaytar, was shot and killed. Further assassinations followed in France, Cyprus, Greece, and elsewhere. The operation was suspended in July 1973, when an innocent man mistakenly identified as Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of ‘Black September’, was killed in Lillehammer, Norway.Slamme was finally eliminated in Beirut in early 1979, with the approval of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
At the same time, in April 1973, the IDF and the Mossad launched a raid on the PLO headquarters in Beirut in Operation Aviv Naorim, in which several of the organization’s top officials and dozens of other terrorists were killed. The next day, the German ambassador in Beirut, Walter Nowak, condemned the action. This is the same Novak who, only six months after Munich, personally met with one of the leaders of ‘Black September’ and the organizers of the massacre, Abu Yusuf, to offer him “confidence-building measures” on the part of the German government. This episode highlighted the difference between the two approaches: while Germany tried to appease the terrorists, Israel eliminated them.
Contrary to popular belief, the targeted assassinations ordered by Meir were not intended to avenge the massacre in Munich, but were designed to stop further acts of terrorism against Israelis in Europe, in countries where the authorities did not show much desire to act. Most of the ropes that were eliminated were not directly related to the massacre at the Olympics. Mossad head Zamir clarified and explained: “We did not deal with revenge. What we did was to prevent future attacks. We acted against those who thought they could continue to carry out terrorist attacks.”
The main thing was deterrence to make the terrorists understand that the price for their activity would be high, too high. Some of the assassinations were carried out quite dramatically, including the use of explosives instead of cleaner means or those that might appear to be an accident. The Mossad wanted to make it clear to the terrorists beyond any doubt why their comrades were being eliminated one by one, and who was eliminating them. For understandable political reasons, it was necessary to balance all this with the possibility of denying any connection between the actions and Israeli policy, a central principle in the Israeli fight against terrorism. This principle went badly wrong as mentioned in Lillehammer, where six Mossad agents were arrested and put on trial.
The motivation behind the targeted assassination operation was even stronger two months after the Olympics, when the Lufthansa flight from Beirut to Frankfurt was hijacked by Palestinians who demanded the release of the three terrorists who survived the confrontation in Munich. The German government quickly paid a ransom of nine million dollars and released the detainees, who were flown to Libya and received a welcome reserved for heroes.
It would seem that the last thing Germany wanted at the time was to bring the Munich terrorists to trial, when the country’s intelligence services constantly warned of further attacks to force their release. This chain of events was quite convenient, and some experts (including the head of the Mossad at the time) accused Germany of paying the PLO to arrange the hijacking of the plane as a cover for the release of the terrorists. This version was also confirmed in an interview given by the person described as the leader of the attack in Munich, Abu Daud.
After the release of the terrorists, the head of the German Foreign Ministry wrote to the chancellor’s office: “We must be satisfied that the whole matter has calmed down sufficiently.” These things reflected the prevailing attitude in Europe at that time and later. In 1977, the French authorities arrested Abu Dawud, and turned to Germany to find out if it would be interested in his extradition. The Germans refused. The French government feared attacks on its soil, and allowed Abu Daoud to fly to Algeria despite strong protests from Israel and the US. He continued to boast of organizing the massacre until the day he died.
Beyond the fear of terrorist attacks, the European appeasement towards terrorist values was partly due to the perception that too close cooperation with Israel in security matters would damage European relations with Arab countries, endangering the supply of oil and other export contracts. Senior American and European officials have often criticized Israel’s policy of assassinations, which has affected joint intelligence work as well as trade and diplomatic relations. Some even accused Israel of adopting its own terrorist methods. As Golda Meir explained:
The person who threatens with a gun and the person who defends himself to make sure that the gun did not shoot him, are not similar”
After Islamic terrorism began to turn its fire on civilians in the West, those “principled” objections began to disappear, with the US and its allies often forced to resort to policies similar to that of Israel. The US and Britain used intelligence agencies, special forces and airstrikes to eliminate Terrorists ranging from Yemen to Pakistan. Two days after the major terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, French military forces launched a series of attacks against ISIS bases in Syria, similar to the Israeli operations after Munich.
Not surprisingly, under the new circumstances and when the Mossad provided European countries with information about terrorist plots in their territory, there was no longer a need to tell them “twice, three or five times”. When their own citizens became intent on terrorism, they quickly acted where they failed to act in the 1970s, when Israelis were the primary target.
As often happens, the Western countries that initially condemned and even expressed hostility towards Israel’s actions, were finally obliged to follow the path that Israel had to pave in order to protect the lives of its citizens. The reactions of America and Europe to jihadist attacks on their territory, especially after 9/11, are an example of this.
And nowadays we are experiencing another example: the Iranian nuclear threat. Israel’s leaders have repeatedly warned that Tehran’s nuclear program poses a serious risk not only to their country but to the region and the entire world. As it responded after Munich, Israel is conducting a covert operation to stop the threat, including the use of targeted assassinations. However, in the meantime, the US and Europe are trying to appease the Ayatollahs, just as they did with Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s, and are on the verge of signing an agreement that will allow the Iranians a path to nuclear weapons. This time, ignoring the Israeli warnings will have far more severe and far-reaching consequences.
The determined Israeli operation after Munich was a success. He convinced the Arab world that the Mossad could strike anywhere at will, and instilled fear in the hearts of the terrorists, forcing them to flee from the places where they had been operating without interruption until then. Some of the moderate Arab countries even put pressure on the PLO to stop the attacks. Although the assassination operation did not completely eliminate terrorism in Europe, and as with any operation to fight terrorism it also had less positive consequences, but the actions of the Mossad in Europe and in Beirut convinced Arafat to finally order the cessation of operations “Black September” towards the end of 1973. As Golda told:
We do not enjoy military operations. We do them because we have to, and thank God they are effective enough”
Fifty years after 1972, the trauma of Munich remains deeply etched in the hearts of Israelis, and in the hearts of others who witnessed the unfolding events with sadness and shock. There is no doubt that the 11 Israelis who were murdered in Munich were always at the forefront of the brave men and women who took part in the operation designed to prevent the recurrence of the horrors. In Meir’s words at the time:
It is possible that a day will come when the stories of heroism and resourcefulness, sacrifice and determination, of those warriors will be told in Israel, and future generations will tell them to their children with admiration and pride, as another chapter in the heroic heritage of our nation.
In memory of: David Berger, Yosef Gutfreund, Moshe Weinberg, Eliezer Halpin, Mark Slavin, Zeev Friedman, Yosef Romano, Kehat Shore, Andrey Spitzer, Amitsur Shapira, Yaakov Springer and Anton Pliegerbauer
Colonel Richard Kemp was the commander of British forces in Afghanistan and also served in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. He previously served as head of the international terrorism team at the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee. A full version of the column was first published on the Gatestone Institute website.