The Story of Israel’s Revenge Against Terrorism at the ’72 Olympics

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. The 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, was dominated by Mark Spitz, a Jewish-American swimmer, who won seven gold medals for the United States. It was also the Olympics where Palestinian terrorists massacred eleven Israeli athletes. This incident was televised across America and prompted President Nixon to establish plans to avert terrorism in the United States. But what the world didn’t see was Israel’s response: Operation Wrath of God.

Let’s take a listen. Nearly every week on television and in newspapers, we witness a blood feud between Israelis and Palestinians that has gone on for decades. It was in the late 1960s when this cycle of violence began to escalate. After the small New Jersey-sized nation of Israel soundly defeated the Arab Coalition in the 1967 Six-Day War, Palestinian terrorist groups turned to increasingly spectacular acts of evil to get world attention. Israel defended itself as it always had, but 1972 would be the turning point. On May 8th of that year, four members of a Palestinian terrorist group hijacked the Boeing 707 aircraft with ten crew members and ninety passengers, sixty-seven of them Jewish, and landed it in the heart of Israel, Tel Aviv. Soon after taking command, the two men and two women hijackers, armed with hand grenades, a revolver, and two five-pound explosive devices, separated the Jewish hostages from the others and sent them to the back of the aircraft. The captain relaid the terrorist demands that 315 convicted Palestinian terrorists be released from Israeli prisons, or they would blow up the airplane with its passengers. Israel’s policy was never to negotiate with terrorists, never to back down. Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered an assault on the aircraft. The mission was led by Israel’s elite anti-terror unit, commanded by Ehud Barak and joined by Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom would become future prime ministers. Israeli commandos approached the aircraft disguised as aircraft mechanics in white jumpsuits. They immediately killed the two male hijackers and apprehended the two females. Here’s Ehud Barak on the incident.

But it took just 90 seconds before we stormed and killed two of the terrorists.

Israelis interviewed the two captured female terrorists, who admitted they were members of Black September, an amorphous branch of the terrorist organization Fatah founded by Yasser Arafat. Fatah is the most radical wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, better known as the PLO. The man who ordered the hijacking was Arafat’s protege and Fatah’s commander, Ali Hassan Salameh. Two weeks after the hijacking, Salameh’s name came up again in connection with a bloody massacre that left 24 dead, 78 wounded at the same airport. Two of the three terrorists died and the third was arrested, but Israel had not heard the last of Salameh or Black September. Here’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

After that, they realized they can’t hijack Israeli planes. If they go to Israel with somebody else’s plane and try to extort something there, they’ll be killed. So they figured that go somewhere.

Else. Somewhere the whole world would be watching: the 1972 Munich Olympics. Munich’s Olympic Games were carefully constructed to convey the message that Germany’s rehabilitation was complete. That 1936, when Berlin under Adolf Hitler hosted the Eleventh Olympiad against the backdrop of discrimination and violence, was a relic of a dead past. The German organizers didn’t want the world to see them holding guns, which might evoke old images. No armed guards or police were positioned in the Olympic Village or at stadium entrances. Security costs for the games came to $2 million. This relatively insignificant sum was not born of miserliness, but of a frank desire to keep security to a minimum. In contrast, the 2004 Olympic security costs exceeded $1 billion. Germany, Cologne Airport. Wednesday, August 23rd, 1972. A middle-aged couple waits for their four pieces of luggage to arrive. The man, dressed in a well-tailored suit, hoists the bags onto two carts and heads towards the customs line and the exit beyond. The Palestinian man is a courier for Fatah and its Black September wing in Europe. His accomplice, posing as his wife, is there to lend legitimacy to their cover. The couple is asked to open their bags. The husband refuses, begins to yell and scream, “I am a businessman, not a criminal!” The customs officials have seen this act before. They point to a bag and ask him to open it. The man reluctantly opens the suitcase. Lingerie in many colors and styles covers the inspection desk. The officer motions to the man, “Close your case and carry on.” What the German officer doesn’t know is that the three pieces of luggage he failed to inspect contain eight AK-47s, dozens of magazines loaded with 7.62-millimeter bullets, and ten hand grenades. The operation is on track. With 13 days to go before the attack, the terrorists have time to kill. They choose nicknames for themselves. One member of Black September calls himself Che Guevara as a tribute to his hero, the bloodthirsty Cuban communist sidekick of Fidel Castro. The rest of the eight Palestinians take in the sights, make dinner plans, and catch up on sleep. One even goes to two Olympic volleyball games.

And you’ve been listening to the story of the massacre at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. When we come back, more of this remarkable moment in American and world history, here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot; help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories in the story of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, remembered in part by Mark Spitz’s remarkable performance, winning seven gold medals, but also for something far worse. Let’s continue with the story.

Tuesday, September 5th, 1972, Day 10 of the Olympics. A bus filled with the sounds of backslapping and laughter arrives back at the Olympic Village; the jubilant Israeli athletes just spent an evening at the theater. At 4:30 a.m. on September 5th, as the athletes sleep, eight tracksuit-clad members of Black September carried duffel bags loaded with AK-47 automatic rifles, semi-automatic pistols, and hand grenades. As they are about to scale the six-foot barrier into the Olympic Village, they’re immediately spotted. An Englishman. A few tipsy American athletes sneaking back into the village after a night on the town, quickly assist them in getting over the chain-link fence.

There you go. Let’s go. I got you. Come on.

The terrorists encounter no guards, but to the sober eyes of six German postal workers, the men seem suspicious. They report the break-in, but no action is taken. Once inside, the Black September members change their clothes and load their weapons. With a stolen key, they attempt to enter the apartment housing the Israeli delegation, but the lock won’t turn. The jiggling of the key immediately wakes Yossef Gutfreund, a six-foot-three, 285-pound international wrestling referee. The terrorists flip the lock and open the door, but Gutfreund stands in the hall, staring at the masked men as he throws the full weight of his body and strength against the door. One of the terrorists quickly wedges the steel barrel of his AK-47 between the door and the frame and begins using it as a crowbar. The weightlifting coach, a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family on German soil, hears the commotion and sees the masked terrorists slowly gaining entrance. He yells to his flatmates to run for their lives as he throws himself out the back window and escapes. The terrorists overpower Gutfreund and charge into the room. Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg is shot through the cheek while trying to fight off the intruders. A 106-pound Israeli wrestler slaps at one of the terrorists’ barrels and runs down to the underground parking garage as one of the terrorists follows him, spraying gunfire in his direction. He also escapes. Then the wounded Weinberg, holding a rag on his bullet-holed cheek, makes another attack, knocking one of the intruders unconscious and slashing another with a fruit knife before being shot to death. Weightlifter Yossef Romano, a veteran of the Six-Day War, also attacks and wounds one of the terrorists before being shot and killed. That September morning in 1972, the people of Munich woke to the sound of sirens and the rumble of military trucks. Flickering police lights paint the city blue. At dawn, the news was breaking all over the world.

The peace of what would have been called the Serene Olympics was shattered just before dawn this morning, about 5 o’clock.

Here’s Peter Jennings with the live broadcast.

If I were to guess at the moment, at which of the commando organizations this group has to come from, might be most likely, then, a group called Black September. I was a reporter based in Lebanon, and if you were an American reporter working for an American news agency, and you knew all the characters, because the Palestinians were very open about many of the things they were trying to accomplish, and so we knew some of the players. And I’ll always know what they were doing, and God knows what they were going to do.

And they’ve taken nine members of the Israeli delegation hostage.

It now appears that Black September has tossed a piece of paper at the window, a list of demands.

A man with a stocking mask and his face weird. What’s going on inside that head?

And mine.

The terrorists demanded the release of 234 prisoners who were being held in Israeli jails, and also some who are being held abroad, but Golda Meir would have none of it. She just rejected their demands outright.

By 5 p.m., the Palestinians demanded an airplane to take them and their hostages to an unspecified Arab country. The Germans agreed, counting on ambushing the terrorists at the airfield. German authorities transported the terrorists and their hostages to Fürstenfeldbruck.

Airport heading to an airport called Fürstenfeldbruck.

In his book ‘Stateless,’ the commander of Fatah shared why he chose the Munich Games as his target: to use the unprecedented number of media outlets in one city to display the Palestinian struggle for better or worse around the world. Viewers hunkered in front of their TVs, watching and waiting for the outcome.

The latest word we get from the airport is that, quote, ‘all hell has broken loose out there.’

At the airport, a novice German police force set up a decoy airplane to lure the terrorists into the line of their sniper fire. But as the terrorists boarded the plane, the pilots and the crew were gone.

This is ridiculous.

Little did they know that just 15 minutes prior, a group of 13 German officers from the Police Special Task Command Force abandoned the plane and their mission for fear of their lives.

He’s right. We can’t do any good here.

They took a last-minute vote; it was unanimous, and their commander supported their decision wholeheartedly. With an empty plane, the terrorists immediately assumed it was a trap.

And it all went horribly wrong.

They degenerated into a battle, and the hostages were in the middle of this. They were manacled and shackled in the back of the helicopters. And all this time, the two Israelis who had come over to try and help the rescue operation were standing there watching this, impotent. Really, they were powerless to do anything because the battle had begun.

German snipers eliminated five of the eight terrorists in the chaotic gunfight.

Oh my God.

But before their deaths, the members of Black September murdered all nine of the chained Israeli hostages. The three surviving terrorists were held in police custody. Rumors raged; the media pounded.

We have reports now that all the hostages, all nine hostages, are safe.

The international news agency Reuters sent out an exclusive wire report. It read, ‘All Israeli hostages have been freed.’

And according to these reports, all Arab terrorists have died by German gunfire.

The good news spread like wildfire, and the world celebrated. In Israel, relatives and friends showed up at athletes’ family homes with flowers and champagne. Then, just after 3 in the morning, the truth finally reached the media when Reuters sent a corrected message over the wires: FLASH—All Israeli hostages seized by Arab guerrillas killed. ABC’s Jim McKay broadcast the devastating update to the world. He looked straight into the camera and said, ‘I’ve…’

‘…just gotten the final word.’

‘When I was a kid, my father…’

‘…is to say, ‘Our greatest hopes and our worst fears seldom realized.’ Our worst fears have been realized.’

Tonight.

It’s now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms this morning — yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport. Tonight they’re all gone.

They’re all gone. On to an airing to bring them home together.

Jews had been led yet again to their death on German soil. Only 27 years passed since six million Jews were herded into camps and murdered. As the relatives of the Munich victims gathered to bury their dead, Israeli security officials plotted revenge.

I think it was a great shock. It was a great shock because it showed you what kind of lack of ambition, lack of any moral constraints, this terror had. It was… If it was supposed to break our morale, it didn’t.

And you’ve been listening to the story of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and what a tragedy. You could hear it in Jim McKay’s voice. He was one of the great broadcasters and did ABC’s ‘Wide World of Sports,’ and you could just hear the grief. Two killed in rooms, nine killed in the airport—just flat out murdered. And then you heard the voice of now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose brother was killed in the Entebbe raid. When we come back, the story of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and the acts of terrorism committed there, here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories in the story of the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, and overshadowed remarkable performances by American athletes, including Mark Spitz, the Jewish-American swimmer who won seven gold medals for the United States. Let’s pick up where we last left off in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Golda Meir told Parliament that Israelis would go after the terrorists responsible. ‘We will smite them wherever they may be.’ At first, Golda’s airstrike response looked like previous skirmishes, but this was just the beginning. Golda wanted to set a new standard. She realized Israel could no longer afford to respond and retaliate. The Talmudic imperative ‘to rise and slay the one who comes to kill you’ needed to be fulfilled to the letter of the law, she said. Prime Minister Meir authorized the assassination campaign. They called it Operation Wrath of God. Terror would soon arrive at the terrorists’ doorstep.

Of the hijackers.

If Operation Wrath of God had any lingering doubts, they were erased by events. On October 29th, 1972, just a month and a half.

After Munich, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked coming from Damascus.

The hijackers had demanded the release of three killers of Munich, and the Germans said yes instantly.

The three terrorists celebrated their freedom with a press conference and movie stars. ‘Did you shoot any of the Israeli hostages?’

‘It’s not important to say I killed them.’

It was clear that if those who planned and carried out the attack at Munich were ever going to pay for what they did, only Israel could extract that payment. Operation Wrath of God would be the instrument of its revenge.

That was the first time, I think, in the history of Israel, namely in the history of the world, that the state decided to pursue a policy of personal killing in a systematic way.

A committee led by Meir drafted a secret hit list of Black September members.

Ambushed and slaughtered again. Other rest of th.