Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response

by Klein, Aaron J.

  The investigation into the murder of Zu’aytir was never closed. Detectives picked up clues from the assassination site, including the rented getaway cars, but they all led to dead ends. There were no suspects and no arrests. A senior Roman police official was quoted in the next day’s paper as saying that their working assumption was that the assassination was politically driven and carried out by a Jewish group.

  As the mission to assassinate Zu’aytir unfolded, Golda decided to create a post in her office for a personal advisor on terrorism. She chose Major General Aharon Yariv, the professional and charming newly retired head of Military Intelligence. Some saw the nomination as a slap in the face to Zamir—a public display of no confidence. In fact, Golda recognized the need for someone to reorganize the intelligence community in a way that would allow a fluid campaign against the new threat of overseas terrorism. She needed someone willing to enforce cooperation and order among the different intelligence bodies, each insistent on maintaining its administrative and operational independence.

  Yariv, fifty-two, with his piercing blue eyes, mild manners, unassuming personality, and inner calm, was the perfect man for the job. With time, the heads of the intelligence organizations realized that he did not pose a threat to their authority. As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said at Yariv’s funeral in 1994, “He was a man bereft of pretentiousness; who always spoke in question marks, never exclamation points, who always researched, asked, inquired, never banged on the table, and never saw himself as the final arbiter.”

  As soon as he took the reins, Yariv clarified the jurisdiction of each intelligence agency. He instituted a weekly forum in an office in the red-roofed, single-floor residence of the prime minister in Tel Aviv. Attending were the deputy director of the Mossad, Shlomo Abarbanel; director of Shabak, Yosef Harmelin; the head of Military Intelligence’s Branch 4, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Mor; and several other select members—approximately ten in all. The meetings began with an overview of the week’s attacks or attempted attacks. Lieutenant Colonel Mor presented the new warnings of possible terror attacks in Israel and abroad. After that the floor was turned over to the principals. They offered their interpretations of the intelligence and discussed the best course of action.

  Yariv’s personality was pivotal to the success of the weekly conferences. His reputation, experience, respect for others, and congeniality neutralized the fears many harbored about sharing information. The representatives of the Shabak, Mossad, and Branch 4 shared their most sensitive intelligence. “Everything was on the table,” Lieutenant Colonel Mor said. “Those meetings provided the infrastructure for cooperation. What happened in there was unprecedented.”

  Over the years, Zu’aytir’s guilt came to be taken as fact. A steady stream of intentional leaks from the defense establishment tied him to terror attacks against Israeli targets in Italy. Nonetheless, some remained skeptical about the intellectual’s ties to terrorist operations. Years later, the truth seeped out. “As far as I remember, there was some involvement on his part in terrorist activities; not in operations but in terrorist activities: supplying, helping, let us say ‘support’ activities,” Yariv explained in the BBC interview in 1993. He went on, trying to vindicate Israel’s assassination campaign: “You must remember the situation. Activity continued on their part and the only way we thought we could stop it—because we didn’t have any interest in just going around and killing people—was to kill people in leadership roles. And it worked in the end. It worked.”

  The candid interview hit members of the intelligence community like a bomb in a closed room. They were furious. It was the first time a senior Israeli official, the advisor to the prime minister on counterterrorism, had broken the code of silence.

  Zu’aytir was not directly involved in the Munich Massacre. It also seems unlikely that he had an indirect hand in the operation as a saya’an. Uncorroborated and improperly cross-referenced intelligence information tied him to the support network of Black September in Rome. From there, a slippery slope led the politically active, low-level saya’an to the Mossad’s hit list. Looking back, his assassination was a mistake. Undoubtedly, it resulted from the genuine desire to neutralize those involved in the Munich Massacre and “hot” operatives in the midst of preparing an attack. Zu’aytir was, at best, a small fish in a pond full of sharks. But in the vengeance-laced atmosphere of September and October 1972, when the head of the Mossad proclaimed that the mysterious, bohemian translator had blood on his hands, no one was in the mood to dispute it.

  The Palestinians did not attribute the assassination to error. The “Voice of Palestine” from Baghdad announced Zu’aytir’s death the following day. “The Palestinian National Liberation Movement has lost one of its most prominent, leading, and struggling members, a shahid and hero, Wael Zu’aytir, the representative of Fatah in Italy, who was assassinated by Zionist intelligence at 2245 yesterday when he was returning to his home in Rome.”

  This time, the conspiratorial Palestinian interpretation of current events was correct. The radio announcer continued in Arabic: “Fatah wishes to draw the attention of the world to the fact that the assassination of the hero Wael Zu’aytir is part of the Zionist terror campaign being carried out by the enemy throughout the world. Fatah stresses again that the pursuit and assassination of our fighters will only increase its determination to carry on with its struggle and revolution. It is a revolution until victory.”

  20 THE GREAT CAPITULATION

  LUFTHANSA FLIGHT OVER ZAGREB, YUGOSLAVIA SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1972, 1600H

  Lufthansa Flight 615 from Damascus to Frankfurt took off at 0535 hours, with no passengers. The plane and its seven-person crew stopped in Beirut, where thirteen male passengers boarded the flight. Ten miles north of Cyprus, Captain Walter Claussen felt the hard muzzle of a pistol on the back of his neck. “I am the captain now,” a soft voice said in Arabic-accented German. The hijacker took control of the intercom and introduced himself to the passengers as Abu-Ali. He informed them that the flight was now under his command. “Operation Munich,” the mission to free the three Black September terrorists caught alive at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield, was under way, he said. If the West German government agreed to free “the three heroes” of the Munich Massacre from their Bavarian jail cells, where they had been held for the past seven and a half weeks, and allowed them safe passage to a friendly Arab state, no one on the flight would be harmed; if not, he and the other terrorist on board would blow up the plane. He took his finger off the intercom’s broadcast button and commanded Claussen to land in Cyprus. They would refuel before proceeding to Germany.

  The West German government, without informing their Israeli counterparts, immediately decided to acquiesce to the terrorists’ demands. The incarcerated Black September fighters were an unnecessary burden. Pragmatism demanded their release. Abu-Iyad interpreted Germany’s decision in Middle Eastern terms: in his memoir, Stateless, he called it “cowardly.”

  Radio reports lured thousands of bystanders to Riem Airport, outside Munich, where hundreds of police, border troops, and armored vehicles awaited the hijacked plane. At 1100 hours, the Lufthansa Boeing flew over the airport but did not land, changing course for Zagreb, Yugoslavia. The hijackers altered their plans after the German authorities told them they needed ninety minutes to round up the three prisoners and bring them to the airport. The hijackers, they said, could land in Munich and wait. Claussen reported to air traffic control that Abu-Ali was storming around the cockpit, livid.

  The hijackers never explained their sudden change of destination. They may have feared a ruse, a plan that would cripple the plane or a violent takeover mission designed to free the hostages. Now they altered their demands—the Palestinian prisoners were to be brought to Zagreb. The plane circled above the city, waiting for confirmation that the prisoners were on the ground, ready to be swapped. Hours passed and fuel dwindled—Claussen told his captors that there was enough fuel to last until 1730 hours.

  Germ
an authorities sent a Condor passenger plane to Zagreb with the CEO of Lufthansa, two police officers, two replacement pilots, and the three prisoners. As the plane approached the Yugoslavian city the two sides had yet to reach an agreement about the terms of the prisoner exchange. The government proposed a simultaneous trade: the Palestinian prisoners for their citizens; Abu-Ali agreed—the three men would be brought on board and flown to an Arab state, in return for the hostages. The German decision was influenced by the pleas of the Lufthansa pilot, who warned that the plane was running perilously low on fuel. “Please hurry up,” he said. “These are our last moments.” When the 727 finally touched ground on the heels of the Condor, there were only two hundred liters of fuel left in its tank—enough for thirty more seconds of flight.

  The three newly freed prisoners bounded up the stairs to the plane, but in violation of the agreement, the hijackers refused to free the hostages—they all took off for Libya. At 2100 hours, the Boeing 727 reached Tripoli. The hijackers and the released prisoners, who had been partying throughout the flight, were greeted like kings upon arrival. While the West German ambassador to Libya arranged for the immediate return of the hostages to Germany, the freed terrorists held a press conference. International audiences both heard the terrorists’ firsthand version of events in Munich and witnessed the complete capitulation of the German government.

  Chancellor Willy Brandt explained Germany’s actions in his own words. “The passengers and the crew were threatened with annihilation unless we released the three Palestinian survivors of the Fürstenfeldbruck massacre. Like the Bavarian government, I then saw no alternative but to yield to this ultimatum and avoid further senseless bloodshed.”

  Brandt neglected to mention that West Germany felt threatened by the terrorists incarcerated on their soil. Pressure from Arab countries to release the three had been building since the massacre, and reports of possible revenge operations against Germans and Germany were pouring in. It was only a matter of time before a hijacked plane or some other extortionate measure would “force” the Germans to release the three terrorists, who were, after all, putting German lives at risk.

  German, Palestinian, and Israeli sources contended that the hijacking, carried out by PFLP specialists under the command of Wadi Haddad, was coordinated, in advance, with German authorities. Some claim that the West German government paid for the mission, wiring $5 million to the account of the PFLP for the simulated hijacking. When Ulrich Wagner, senior aide to the interior minister Genscher, was asked point-blank and on camera what he thought of the alleged German-Palestinian scheme, he replied, “Yes, I think it’s probably true.” One detail pointing to the likelihood of the scheme was the composition of the passengers: they were few, and they were all male. This unusual occurrence supports, but does not prove, the conspiracy theory.

  Whatever the case, the Germans were guided by pragmatism rather than principle—and chose appeasement over confrontation. From the time of the Olympic massacre to the end of the 1980s, there was not a single armed Palestinian attack against Germans, despite Palestinian terrorist activity all over Europe. All the while the German secret service cultivated close ties with most of the Palestinian terror groups, including Fatah. Their main liaison was Atef Bseiso.

  West Germany’s speedy release of the Black September terrorists produced astonishment and rage in Israel. The Israeli ambassador was called back to Jerusalem for “consultations.” Israel also promptly launched a retaliatory air raid against four Palestinian training camps in Syria, killing sixty-five people. Time magazine explained the reprisal as a move against Hafez Al-Assad’s regime, one of the few that publicly harbored terrorists and financed their operations.

  Golda Meir was in her office when she learned of the German decision to free the terrorists. “I was literally physically sickened,” she wrote in her memoirs. Days later, when Zvi Zamir and Mike Harari came to her office seeking authorization to assassinate the PLO representative in Paris, she was quick to agree.

  21 A RIPE TARGET

  PARIS, 175 RUE D’ALÉSIA FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1972, 0845H

  Mahamoud Hamshari, the PLO’s unofficial man in Paris, was a soft target. His job demanded that he meet with anyone interested in discussing the “Palestinian cause.” He had no bodyguard, no nervous tingling on the back of his neck, no instinct to look over his shoulder. He held a Ph.D. in history and espoused progressive political opinions in public. Though the Zu’aytir assassination sent ripples of fear through the Palestinian leadership in Europe, Hamshari thought his status as a quasi-diplomat made him immune from the Mossad’s deadly reach.

  Hamshari didn’t think twice when an Italian journalist invited him for coffee. They met near his house at a corner café on the Left Bank. The journalist lobbed softball questions at the pudgy thirty-eight-year-old, who answered at great length in fluent French. After two hours of chitchat the two shook hands. Hamshari offered his card in case any follow-up questions should arise. He had no notion that the inquisitive journalist received his paycheck from Tel Aviv. The agent, an undercover operative from Caesarea, had met with Hamshari to confirm his identity, address, and phone number. Over a cup of coffee, Hamshari had given the Mossad the verification they needed to plan his death.

  Getting to Hamshari was relatively easy; executing him without harming his wife and child, while keeping the operatives’ cover intact, was proving difficult. Although surveillance had followed his every move for the past two weeks, Harari and his staff officers had not been able to draft a solid plan. They knew they had to act promptly: soon Hamshari might catch an appraising stare or feel the heat of a tail.

  Harari sought assistance outside his Caesarean empire. Although Harari hated the idea of bringing in outsiders, Zvi Zamir ordered him to summon Keshet—Rainbow, the Mossad’s burglary unit, which specialized in covert breaking and entering into locked apartments, hotel rooms, safes, and factories. In 1972, Zvi Malchin commanded the tiny unit. Twelve years before, he had apprehended Adolf Eichmann on Garibaldi Street in Buenos Aires and brought him, drugged and without the sanction of international law, to an Israeli court for justice.

  In those chaotic days the Mossad and Military Intelligence considered all PLO envoys a part of the terrorist infrastructure, believing that attacks were planned in their homes and offices. Quasi-diplomats from the Fatah wing of the PLO often transferred money, mail, and weapons to the armed wing of the party. Like the Jewish saya’ans the Mossad used around the world, these expatriated Palestinians didn’t ask questions when their homeland called.

  Hamshari was no different in this regard, but the Mossad also believed that he had played a role in the bombing of a Swiss Air flight on February 21, 1970, from Zurich to Tel Aviv, which took the lives of forty-seven passengers and crew. They also fingered him as an indirect accomplice to a PFLP plan to murder Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, during a trip to Denmark in May 1969. Hamshari’s apartment was allegedly used as an arms storehouse for Black September.

  While Hamshari met with the “Italian journalist,” a Keshet operative waited outside his apartment on Rue d’Alésia. With Hamshari’s French wife, Marie-Claude, and their daughter, Amina, under surveillance and far from the home, the operative went to work. It was the second time he had entered Hamshari’s home. A few days earlier he had broken in and snapped photos of the apartment from every conceivable angle. Caesarea’s staff officers pored over the snapshots and decided that a small individual-sized bomb would be the best way to kill the historian. The photos showed that Hamshari worked at his desk. In the mornings, after his wife and child left home, he’d be alone. The operative stuck the thin slice of plastic explosive just under the telephone. The device was activated by a coded electronic signal, which a tiny antenna would pick up and forward to the electric detonator. All they needed was his voice on the phone to verify that he was in the apartment and five hundred meters of unobstructed access to the device.

  After checking that everything was in pl
ace, the operative left the apartment. He left no sign of his presence.

  The next day, Friday, December 8, in the early morning, a few minutes after 0800 hours, Marie-Claude headed out with Amina. In a command room not far away, Harari, Zamir, and several staff officers from headquarters waited. The Caesarea surveillance team had reported on Hamshari’s personal habits. He usually crawled back into bed after his wife left for work. He didn’t receive visitors, and the building was quiet late in the morning. The “journalist” dialed Hamshari’s number. He got to the receiver on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Can I please speak with Dr. Hamshari?”

  “He is speaking,” Hamshari said, in the formal French third person.

  The Caesarea agent gave his partner an agreed-upon signal. The partner pressed the remote control, sending an electronic signal to the explosive device. The explosion crackled in the still Parisian morning. Hamshari was critically wounded, the apartment blown apart. Three weeks later Hamshari died in his hospital bed from massive internal injuries. Before his death he told investigators from the Paris police about the Italian reporter who called him seconds before the blast.

  PLO leaders in Europe began to fear for their lives. The day after the assassination, Arab diplomats convened in Paris and publicly demanded that the French government assume responsibility for their well-being. At the end of the three-hour press conference, Fauzi Gariani, the senior Libyan representative in the city, bemoaned “the atmosphere of Zionist terror in France.”

  A steady trickle of news posthumously incriminated Zu’aytir and Hamshari. The sources were always “high-ranking officials” in Israeli intelligence. The deterrent effect was taking hold: Palestinian operatives, rather than planning their next high-profile attack, began to concentrate on their own survival.