Seven inconvenient and under-reported facts about the Munich Olympics massacre

Today is the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis and massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.

There are a number of details about the event that do not get the publicity they deserve. 

One is that the terror attack was financed by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. The mastermind of the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), says that both Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas wished him luck and kissed him.

The second is that German security officials were tipped off three weeks before the attack by the German Embassy in Beirut from a Palestinian informant, and did not do anything to stop the attack.

The third inconvenient fact is that the Palestinian terrorists in Munich were aided by German neo-Nazis.  At the time, it was assumed that German Leftists had been involved, but in this case the Palestinians allied with Nazis.

Another is that while the organization that took responsibility for the attack is still referred to a Black September, that organization was Fatah. Black September was a front for Fatah in order to publicly distance itself from terror.  Abu Daoud was quoted in Arab media in 1972 saying,  "There is no such organization as Black September. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah will not appear as the direct executor of the operation." The US government confirmed this in a 1973 memo.

The hijackers were not simply professionals trying to arrange a prisoner. They were bloodthirsty, and as they killed weightlifter Youssef Romano, they castrated him in front of his teammates.

A sixth, and almost unbelievable, fact about Munich is what happened to the three surviving terrorists after the botched rescue attempt at the Munich airport. They were released less than two months after the attack, before going on trial, in exchange for hostages from a hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615 flight.

But that hijacking was, according to credible accounts, arranged by the Germans colluding with Fatah to get rid of the headache of jailing and trying the terrorists.

From a 2000 article in The Guardian:

Black September, the Palestinian terror group that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was allowed by the German government to hijack a passenger jet two months later to provide a 'cover story' for the release of the three gunmen captured at the scene.

According to One Day in September - an Oscar-nominated documentary which is to be released in Britain in May - Bonn indicated to the terrorist group that it would give in to their demands should a certain aircraft - carrying no women and children - be hijacked. The Germans were keen to release the three jailed terrorists to avoid Black September fulfilling threats to carry out a series of bombings and hijackings.

On 29 October, 1972 - not even eight weeks after the Munich attack - a Lufthansa Boeing 727 on its way from Damascus, Syria, to Frankfurt was hijacked by two terrorists as it left Beirut airport. There were only 11 passengers on board, all male. The pilot was told to fly to Munich and the terrorists' demands were relayed to Bonn. Within hours the German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, gave in and the three men were handed over. The Israelis were not consulted.

And only last month, TheJC reported:

“We have found documents that state that the German government asked the Palestinian terror organisation to fake the hijack of a German plane in order to be able to set them free — and for doing so, a month after the heinous terrorist attack, the Palestinians were paid nine million dollars,” Dutch lawyer Carry Knoops-Hamburger, one of the team negotiating with the German government for compensation for the victims’ families, told the JC.  

The final inconvenient fact about the Munich massacre is that it is still praised as "heroic" in Palestinian media and by Palestinian officials, including Abbas himself, today. It is obvious why Abbas didn't apologize for the attack when asked by a reporter last month - because he still considers it an achievement, not a source of embarrassment.

Not one of these facts were mentioned in, for example, AFP's summary of the massacre. 

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With drone attack on US troops, Iran adopts a time tested Palestinian technique against Israel

The New York Times reports:

An armed drone strike last month on an American military base in southern Syria was Iranian retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in Syria, according to eight American and Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The drone attack, which caused no casualties, would be the first time Iran has directed a military strike against the United States in response to an attack by Israel, an escalation of Iran’s shadow war with Israel that poses new dangers to U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Five so-called suicide drones were launched at the American base at Al Tanf on Oct. 20 in what the U.S. Central Command called a “deliberate and coordinated” attack. Only two detonated on impact, but they were loaded with ball bearings and shrapnel with a “clear intent to kill,” a senior U.S. military official said.

Most of the 200 American troops stationed at the base, whose main role is training Syrian militias to fight the Islamic State, had been evacuated hours earlier after being tipped off by Israeli intelligence, the officials said.

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials said they had intelligence indicating that Iran was behind the operation. Because three of the drones did not explode, American officials were able to study them and determine that they employed the same technology as drones used by Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

Israel attacks Iranian targets in Syria, and Iran retaliates against - the United States.

Why?

Perhaps it is because Iran considers the US and Israel to be essentially the same. But they are far more sophisticated than that.

This is an attempt to drive a wedge between Israel and the US.

Iran sees the public debate in the US over support for Israel. While the media exaggerates it a great deal, that isn't important; the perception is. If Iran starts to harass US troops and American targets, while making it clear that this is about Israel, there will be some Americans who say that supporting Israel isn't worth the risk to American lives.

Of course, Iran cannot do this directly, so it has to do it without taking credit but in such a way that it is unmistakable.

This was the wildly successful Palestinian strategy in the 1970s. They directed their terror attacks primarily against Western targets, particularly airplane hijackings and attacks in airports. The terrorists made it clear that if the West would give up its support for Israel, the attacks would stop. George Habash, the PFLP head,  said, "To kill a Jew far from the battlefield has more effect than killing a 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention. And when we set fire to a store in London those few flames are worth the burning down of two kibbutzim. Because we force people to ask what is going on."

PFLP mastermind of airplane hijackings, Wadi Haddad, said, "We must be a constant irritation, a bug under the skin of the developed world. We must make them lose patience with Israel and Palestine that hard way.”

Yasser Arafat responded to the PFLP by creating Black September to be able to reap the benefits of attacking Western targets while maintaining deniability as to being directly responsible, so he could pretend to want peace. 

After only a couple of years of these attacks, the world rewarded Arafat with a speech at the UN. This happened in 1974, in the midst of the Palestinian international terror spree - two years after the Munich Olympics massacre, two years before the Entebbe hijacking, with many other major attacks both within and outside Israel never stopping. 

The West rewarded Arafat's terror by legitimizing him and turning away from Israel while pretending to do this for moral reasons. This culminated in the infamous UN "Zionism is Racism" resolution, a complete capitulation to Palestinian terror by the international community.

Iran is now mimicking the PLO's strategy - be a thorn on the side of the Americans and make it seem as if this will end when the US abandons Israel. Do it in such a way that the US does not have enough clear cut evidence and Congressional backing to directly retaliate against Iran. 

Meanwhile this is an appeal to American opinion that supporting Israel is not worth the cost. And, just as it happened in the 1970s, the people who are most likely to buckle under to  this blackmail are the ones who will loudly proclaim that they are doing it not because they are cowards but because they truly believe in the justice of the anti-Israel cause.

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An excellent account of the Palestinian hijacking attacks from the 1960s to early 80s can be found in an appendix of Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect Preconditions, Causes, and Predictive Indicators, page 86-98. A much shorter article, The 1967 War and the birth of international terrorism  summarizes this as well.

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