CAMERA Op-Ed: Black September Remembered
It is a common, albeit false, assumption that the United States and Israel closely cooperated since the Jewish state’s recreation in 1948. Washington had supported the U.N. Partition Plan that would have created both an Arab and a Jewish state out of British-ruled Mandate Palestine, but then-President Harry Truman did so over the objections of top advisers. Indeed, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon had argued that U.S. support for Israel would be a strategic liability.Munich on my mind
America, in turn, often kept Israel at arm’s length, both forcing the Jewish state to give up territory won in the 1956 Suez War against Nasser and prohibiting weapon sales until 1962. While relations were cordial, and even friendly, the United States tended to view Israel less as a strategic partner and more as a burden.
With Syrian forces moving into Jordan, King Hussein asked for U.S. aerial reconnaissance. Washington turned to the Israelis.
On September 20, Kissinger told Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, the future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, that King Hussein had asked to have Israel’s air force attack the Syrian invaders. A stunned Rabin asked, “Are you recommending that we respond to the Jordanian request?” Kissinger declined to give an answer, telling Rabin that he would get a response from Nixon within half an hour.
After speaking with Nixon, Kissinger told Israeli Premier Golda Meir, that the United States “would look favorably upon an Israeli air attack.”
Meir ordered the reconnaissance flights and Israel sent troops to its border with Syria. Israeli jets, meanwhile, flew low over Syrian tanks in Jordan—sending an unmistakable signal that Israel would intervene. “With that support,” Meir biographer Francine Klagsbrun wrote, “the king used his own air and ground forces to drive the Syrians back to their own country.” By July 1971 the PLO was crushed in Jordan, and Arafat fled to Lebanon.
Subsequently, Kissinger told Rabin that America was “fortunate in having an ally like Israel in the Middle East.”
Security cooperation would continue to improve between the two countries with Israel having demonstrated that it was more of an asset than a liability. Today, the nations enjoy unprecedented cooperation and Israel is considered a major non-NATO ally.
The event had other fateful consequences as well. The failed Syrian intervention led to the rise of Hafez al-Assad who, as defense minister, had opposed it. The PLO, meanwhile, would memorialize it as “Black September” and would go on to create another “state within a state” in Lebanon—igniting years more of warfare. Today another anti-Israel terror group, Hezbollah, has taken the PLO’s place in Lebanon. Elsewhere, Hezbollah has intervened in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad, Hafez’s genocidal son.
“History is not was,” the American novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “it is.”
The Aftermath
Following a September 6 memorial that was criticized for sparse reference to the Israeli victims, the remaining Israeli athletes left Germany. Jewish athletes from other counties also left, or were provided extra security.
For decades, families of some victims appealed to the IOC to establish a permanent memorial. For decades, the IOC declined, worried that a memorial to the victims could “alienate other members of the Olympic community,” according to the BBC.
The IOC rejected an international campaign in support of a minute of silence at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics in memory of the Israeli victims on the massacre’s 40th anniversary. Finally, the IOC conceded, honoring the Israeli victims before the 2016 Rio games.
Israel was well accustomed to war and terror. Its response was particularly resolute. Citing justice, and that Israelis would not be safe anywhere, Golda Meir authorized Operation Grapes of Wrath, and the Mossad began to track down and kill those responsible for the Munich massacre.
Munich Today
Years later, one of the masterminds who escaped justice, Abu Daoud, wrote that funding for the Munich attack was provided by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president since 2005. Had Israel known about that then, it’s possible that Abbas would also have been eliminated along with the other masterminds. Now, he’s President of an entity next to Israel that still supports terror.
The ghosts of Munich have also haunt US politics. Today, a candidate for Congress, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is the grandson of Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, a mastermind of the Munich terrorist attack. While repudiating his grandfather’s actions, other Campa-Najjar statements have raised questions over how true that is.
Remembering the Victims
It’s inappropriate to write of the victims and not mention their names. Each led a full life, and left behind families and legacies that should not be forgotten, even five decades later: David Berger, Zeev Friedman, Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, and Moshe Weinberger.
In their memory, the Genesis 123 Foundation will be holding a webinar on September 9 with two current Israeli Olympians and the widow of Andre Spitzer.
#OnThisDay 1972: Mahmoud Abbas’ #Palestinian 'Black September' terrorists murdered 11 #Israeli athletes during Munich @Olympics.
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 5, 2020
May the memories of the victims be blessed & their avenging a constant reminder that 🇮🇱’s long arm of justice extends far & wide.#MunichMassacre pic.twitter.com/fam8zeLmn4
Black September - The story of the other 9/11
The date 9/11 is seared into our collective memory. That sunny Tuesday morning in 2001, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes and wreaked massive death and destruction on the United States.
A full 31 years before, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes in Europe and took hundreds of hostages. And although the incident faded in the world’s collective memory, the date 9/11 was seared into David Raab’s memory.
At 2:30 a.m. on September 11, 1970, David, his mother and four younger siblings were sleeping fitfully on a TWA plane. It was the beginning of their fifth day on board, with hijackers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) demanding freedom for terrorists jailed in Israel and Europe.
The plane was no longer full. On September 7, non-Jewish women and children had been released and six male passengers were taken to an unknown location. About 80 passengers and 10 crew members – including the Raabs – remained trapped in the jet on Dawson’s Field, a dirt strip in Jordan.
The copilot came down the aisle and gently woke the 17-year-old rabbi’s son from Trenton, New Jersey. The hijackers, he said, wanted David at the front of the plane for questioning.
The terrorists often searched the Jewish passengers’ luggage for Israeli goods and badgered them to “admit” to Israeli citizenship or loyalty. But this summons seemed more ominous.
Tell Joe Biden – retract your promise to reinstate funding the terrorist Palestinian Regime!
— Zionist Organization of America (@ZOA_National) September 4, 2020
Tell Joe Biden – fund JOBS not Palestinian TERRORISTS!#SayItAintSoJoe pic.twitter.com/Iu8FMMujuU