Munich massacre
The Munich Massacre occurred at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when members of the Israeli amateur wrestling team were taken hostage by the Palestinian group Black September, an organization designated 'terrorist' by the United States and Israel. The attack led directly to the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes, five of the eight kidnappers, and one German police officer.
The kidnapping
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Israeli athletes had enjoyed a night out on September 4, 1972, seeing a performance of Fiddler on the Roof before returning to the Olympic Village. At 04:30 on September 5, as the athletes slept, eight members of the Palestinian group Black September, clad in tracksuits and carrying guns and grenades in duffel bags, scaled a two-metre chain-link fence surrounding the compound to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystrasse.
Israeli wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund heard a faint scratching noise at the door of the first apartment. When he investigated, he saw someone had opened it by a few inches. He shouted "Hava tistalku!" (Take cover, boys!) and tried to hold the door closed against the weight of the Palestinians who were forcing their way in. In the confusion, two athletes escaped and another eight managed to hide. According to the CBC [1], weightlifter Joseph Romano grabbed an intruder's gun but was shot and killed, as was wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, when he tried to attack one of the kidnappers with a fruit knife as the hostages were being transported.
After Weinberg's death, the Palestinians were left with nine hostages: David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Joseph Gottfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Andrei Schpitzer, Amitsur Shapira, Kahat Shorr, Mark Slavin and Yaakov Springer.
The kidnappers were subsequently reported to be members of the Palestinian fedayeen from refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. They were: the leader, Luttif Afif ("Issa"), born in Nazareth to a wealthy Christian businessman and his Jewish wife (three of Issa's brothers were also reportedly members of Black September, two of them in Israeli jails), Yasuf Nazzal ("Tony"), Afif Abmed Hamid, Khalid Jawad, Ahmed Chic Thaa, Mohammed Safady, Adnan AI-Gashey and his nephew Jamal Al-Gashey.
The group demanded the release and safe passage to Egypt of 234 Palestinians jailed in Israel, and an additional two in German prisons. Israel's response was immediate and absolute: there would be no negotiation. 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. The German police who took part in the operation had no special training in hostage rescue operations.
According to journalist John K. Cooley, the attack was a particular nightmare for the Germans because the hostages were Jews. Cooley writes that the Germans offered the Palestinians an unlimited amount of money if they would release them. They also offered to substitute high-ranking Germans for the Israeli athletes. Both offers were refused (Green March Black September: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs, London 1973).
Failed rescue
Execution deadlines shifted first by three hours, and then by five more as German authorities attempted to negotiate. German 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.
The kidnappers demanded transportation to Cairo. The authorities feigned agreement and at 10.10 p.m., two helicopters transported both the kidnappers and their hostages to nearby Fürstenfeldbruck airbase, where a Boeing 727 aircraft was waiting. The kidnappers believed they were on their way to Riem, the international airport near Munich. The authorities planned an assault on the kidnappers at the airport.
Five German snipers were chosen to shoot the kidnappers, none of whom had any special training. All had been chosen simply because they shot competitively on weekends;[2] in the later German investigation an officer identified as "Sniper No. 2" stated "I am of the opinion that I am not a sharpshooter."[3] The snipers were positioned at the airport but the authorities were surprised to discover that there were eight kidnappers. No tanks or armored personnel carriers were at the scene. According to Cooley, either one or two Israeli officers assisted with the operation. A New York Times report that Israel's Defence Minister Moshe Dayan was personally present has never been confirmed. During the ensuing 75-minute shoot-out, the German police belatedly called for armored support but it took more than thirty minutes for the tanks to arrive due to traffic congestion in the area.
The helicopters landed just after 10:30 pm, and the four pilots and six of the kidnappers emerged. While four of the Black September members held the pilots at gunpoint, Issa and Tony walked over to inspect the jet, only to find it empty. Knowing they had been duped, they jogged hastily back toward the helicopters, and at approximately 11:00pm the German authorities gave the order to the German police snipers positioned nearby to open fire.
The five German snipers did not have radio contact with each other and were unable to coordinate their fire. As well they did not have precision rifles, and their rifles were equipped with neither scopes nor night-vision devices. In the ensuing chaos, two kidnappers standing near the pilot were killed, and a third was mortally wounded as he fled the scene. The three remaining exposed kidnappers scrambled to safety, and began to return fire and shoot 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 was killed by the random gunfire. The helicopter pilots fled, but the hostages, who were tied up inside the craft, couldn't. A stalemate developed.
Around midnight the armored personnel carriers finally arrived, breaking the stalemate. According to Cooley, at four minutes past midnight, by now into September 6, one of the kidnappers jumped out of the first helicopter. He then turned, threw a grenade back into the cockpit, and sprayed the hostages with gunfire, killing Springer, Halfin and Ze'ev Friedman and wounding Berger.[4] While the first helicopter was burning, writes Cooley, the surviving kidnappers kept fire trucks at bay by shooting at them.
Before the fire from the first helicopter explosion could reach the gas tank of the second helicopter, Issa and another kidnapper emerged from behind it and began firing at the German police; police killed him and a second fedayeen with return fire. The five hostages in the second helicopter died of gunshot wounds during the battle. A German police investigation indicated that a few of the hostages may have been shot inadvertently by the German police. However, a Time reconstruction of the long suppressed Bavarian prosecutor's report indicates that a third kidnapper raked the remaining five hostages — Gutfreund, Schorr, Slavin, Spitzer and Shapira — with fatal gunfire. Berger, though he taken two nonlethal bullets in his lower extremities, would die last, of smoke inhalation. [5] A definitive conclusion was not possible because the hostages' corpses were burned in the explosions and subsequent fire.
Three of the remaining kidnappers, alive and relatively unhurt, lay on the ground (two feigning death), and were captured by German police. Tony, the final kidnapper, was tracked down using dogs and tear gas 40 minutes later, and shot dead after a brief gunfight. By around 12:30 pm the battle was over. [6]
Impact on the Games
The Olympic competition was suspended on September 5 for one full day. The next day, a memorial service by 80,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. IOC President Avery Brundage made no reference to the athletes during a speech praising the strength of the Olympic movement. The Israelis and many others who listened were outraged, according to CBS News. [7] 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. [8]
Willi Daume, president of the Munich organizing committee, at first wanted the remainder of the Games called off, but in the afternoon International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Avery Brundage and others prevailed, stating that they could not let terrorism halt the games.[9]. Brundage stated "the Games must go on", a decision that was endorsed by the Israeli government. [10]
On September 5, the Israeli team announced they would leave Munich. All Jewish sportsmen were placed under guard. The Egyptian team left the games on September 7, stating they feared reprisals. [11]
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. [12] 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."
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". [13] The attack was widely condemned around the world, with King Hussein of Jordan calling it a "savage crime against civilization . . . perpetrated by sick minds," (Cooley 1973).
The German authorities imprisoned the three surviving kidnappers, and soon formed a counter-terrorism unit GSG 9 to provide a more robust hostage rescue response in future.
Within days of the Olympic attack, Golda Meir and the Israeli cabinet approved a series of measures in retaliation. On September 9, Israeli war planes bombed Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, killing over 200 Palestinians (Morris, 1999). This attack was condemned by the UN Security Council. On September 16, Israeli forces invaded 16 villages in Lebanon, killing 120 people, destroying 150 buildings and taking prisoners with them. [14]
On October 29, 1972, a German Lufthansa jet was hijacked and demands were made for the release of the three Black September members being held for trial. The men were subsequently released by Germany.
The Israeli government directed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to locate and assassinate all suspected Black September and PFLP operatives wherever they could be found (Morris 1999). Mossad set up a team of assassins to be aided by its stations and agents in Europe, and compiled its target list using information from "turned" PLO personnel and friendly European intelligence services. Wael 'Aadel Zwaiter, the official PLO representative in Italy, was shot and killed on October 16. Abu Iyad, the PLO's deputy-chief and chief of intelligence at the time, later wrote that Zwaiter was not connected to Black September and had "fiercely opposed . . . all forms of terrorism," (Abu Iyad 1983). This assassination was followed by letter-bomb attacks on PLO representatives in Algeria and Libya, on Palestinians in Bonn and Copenhagen, and on a Red Cross representative in Stockholm (Morris, 1999).
On December 8, 1972, the PLO's representative in Paris, Mohammad Hamshiri was killed by a radio-detonated bomb under his desk. Over the next three months, writes Morris, four PLO, PFLP and PFLP-GC operatives were killed in Cyprus, Greece and Paris. On April 9, 1973, Israel launched Operation Springtime of Youth, a joint Mossad-Israely army operation in Beirut. The targets were Mohammad Yusuf al-Najjar (Abu Yusuf), head of Fatah's intelligence arm (which, Morris writes, ran Black September); Kamal Adwan, who headed the PLO's Western Sector, which controlled PLO action inside Israel; and Kamal Nassir, the PLO spokesman. A group of Israeli 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. They also killed Najjar's wife, who tried to shield him. Two further detachments of commandos blew up the PFLP's headquarters in Beirut and a Fatah explosives plant.
On June 28, 1973, Mohammad Boudia, suspected by Mossad to be the director of operations for Black September in Europe, was killed by a car bomb in Paris.
On July 21, 1973, a team of Mossad agents killed Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan man unrelated to the Munich attack, in Lillehammer, Norway. Five Mossad agents were captured by the Norwegian authorities, convicted of the killing and imprisoned, but were soon released and returned to Israel. See Lillehammer affair for details.
On January 22, 1979, the Mossad agents killed Salameh in Beirut using a remote-controlled car bomb.
Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), who claimed in his autobiography "Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist" that the attack was his idea and that it was financed and endorsed by the PLO, without providing evidence for these claims, remains alive in Amman, Jordan.
References
- Time Magazine, August 5, 2002
- CBS News, September 5, 2002
- The archives of CBC Television
- BBC News August 20, 2004
- The Guardian, September 7, 1972
- Encarta MSN
- Calahan, A. B. (1995) "The Israeli Response to the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre and the Development of Independent Covert Action Teams"
- Cooley, J. K. (London 1973), Green March Black September: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs ISBN 0714629871
- Daoud, M. (Abu Daoud) (New York, 2002) Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist ISBN 1559704292
- Khalaf, Salah (Abu Iyad) (Tel Aviv, 1983) Without a Homeland: Conversations with Eric Rouleau
- Morris, B. (New York, 1999 and 2001), Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-2000, Vintage Books edition ISBN 0679744754
See also
- List of massacres
- Reeve, Simon (September 2000), One Day in September ISBN 1559705477
External Links
- The Israeli Response to the 1972 Munich Massacre – Includes an extensive overview of the Munich Massacre
- One Day in September
- 21 Hours at Munich