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

by Klein, Aaron J.

  At twenty-nine, sixteen years after the funeral, Hassan returned to Palestine as a businessman and took up residence in Ramallah. Hassan Ali Salameh, educated in some of the best private schools in England, had a different take on life than that of his father and grandfather. “My father wanted me to be brought up away from his kind of life. I have a genuine desire for peace and I have a different mentality from the fighters of the past,” he said.

  33 “KEEP ME POSTED”

  TEL AVIV, MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS

  OCTOBER 1986

  In autumn 1986 the members of the Target-Tracking Committee were called to the “Seminary,” the Mossad’s instructional facility. Located on a slight hill overlooking the sea, it was a place to which the military men, in flannel shirts and jeans, were always happy to come. Aside from the benefit of shedding their uniforms, they knew lunch would be world-class. The Mossad was famous for it. Many heads of state were received in the Seminary. Golda went there to relax after cancer treatments.

  Each member of the five-person forum understood that a vital piece of raw intelligence regarding a major terrorist had come through the pipes. In an upstairs room, with the sea twinkling outside the window, they would be asked to analyze the intelligence and determine whether it was significant enough to put a person on, or off, the target list. Today’s news was different. The Mossad Facha division head waited for everyone to take their place around the hardwood conference table before he let the news spill out. “They’re all dead,” he said of the terrorists responsible for the Munich Massacre. “None of them are breathing anymore.”

  Everyone wanted details, but the Facha chief wouldn’t say another word. The committee members knew his announcement related to two of the three terrorists that had left the scene of the massacre alive. The Mossad had reported that the third man, Adnan Al-Jishey, had died of heart failure sometime in 1978–1979 in the Persian Gulf state of Dubai. His natural death, they were told, was caused by a genetic heart mutation. Now they learned that the circle had been closed—Jamal Al-Jishey and Mohammed Safady had also expired. All of the perpetrators of the murder had paid the price. The news was sent up the chain of command to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Nothing was leaked to the press.

  Khaled Abu-Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist, had certainly not heard about the meeting. On July 31, 1992, he published an interview with Jamal Al-Jishey. The glaring headline over the front-page article in the weekly Jerusalem was: “Mossad Still Trying to Kill Me.” Al-Jishey, forty, lived in Tunis and continued to abide by strict security precautions. “I’m sure the Mossad is still looking for me,” he said. “As far as the Israelis are concerned, the case is not yet closed. The Mossad will try to kill me until the day I die.”

  An additional testament to Al-Jishey’s sound health came in 2000, with the release of the Academy Award–winning documentary One Day in September. In Arthur Cohen’s movie, Al-Jishey sits for long interviews, his face blackened and his form distorted by a hat.

  The fate of Mohammed Safady, the third terrorist to leave Munich alive, remains ambiguous, although most analysts tended to believe he had been killed. Some members of the intelligence community intimated that his death had come at the hands of the Lebanese Christian Phalangists—Israel’s allies—as a gesture of sorts to the Israeli Mossad. The Jerusalem article supported that notion, noting that Jamal Al-Jishey was the last man standing from the massacre. Tawfiq Tirawi disagrees. In a conversation we held in his Ramallah office in July 2005, Tirawi confirmed that he and Safady were close friends and that Safady was alive and well. “As alive as you are,” Tirawi said, smiling playfully, refusing to add details. “The Israelis could still harm him,” he explained.

  Thought to be dead, Jamal Al-Jishey and Mohammed Safady were officially removed from the Israeli hit list in 1986, at the close of the meeting held in the Seminary. The permanent members of the committee were the head of Target Branch of Military Intelligence, a lieutenant colonel; the head of the Terror Division in Military Intelligence, a colonel; the head of the Intelligence Gathering Division in Military Intelligence, a colonel; the head of a branch of Unit 8200, Israel’s high-quality NSA equivalent, a lieutenant colonel; and the host of the meeting, the head of the Facha division at the Mossad, the equivalent of a major general. “The Mossad member was always someone serious, a former combatant, very mission-oriented,” one of the regular members told me. “The list itself had a maximum of fifteen slots. Over the years, two or three names were taken off the list and replaced by others after it became clear that the person was not involved in Munich. Others were added when information implicated them in the attack. Some kept their borderline status the whole time.”

  The meetings went straight to the point. “We addressed only new intelligence. Usually one of the agencies had new information about a wanted man, something like upcoming travel plans. Once we all agreed that the information was credible, we shifted gears, becoming more focused, active, and secretive. The Mossad would then bring in Caesarea’s chief intelligence officer. He and his staff officers would organize and collect all of the intelligence information, including pictures of the target, and the target buildings, from the ground and from above. As the plans progressed, the attention to detail increased. At this stage we were all in operation mode.”

  The head of the Mossad brought the finalized plan to the Heads of Agencies Committee. There, the heads of the Mossad, Shabak, and Military Intelligence, frequently joined by the military aide to the prime minister, could debate the necessity or timing of a mission, arguing for its suspension or delay. Only the prime minister had veto power. The need for these meetings was purely practical. The 1995 assassination of Fatkhi Shkaki illustrates their utility.

  As head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a small, extreme terrorist organization, Fatkhi Shkaki proved himself quite able. He was a strong leader with a firm grip on every aspect of his organization. In January 1995, after a deadly attack at Beit Lid junction east of the Israeli city of Netanya, it was decided to begin planning his assassination. The goal was preventive—it was assumed that eliminating the capable Shkaki would keep Islamic Jihad out of action for a year or two.

  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin authorized the commencement of operational assassination plans. For roughly two months the Mossad collected intelligence on Shkaki, filling his already fat file with even more information. The intensive intelligence-gathering effort bore fruit. Shkaki could be killed in early summer 1995. They presented their plan and the proof of his guilt to the agency heads.

  Uri Saguy, head of Military Intelligence, was dead set against the Mossad plan. After the meeting he spoke with Prime Minister Rabin, explaining that the assassination, which was to be carried out in the heart of Damascus, would damage the already shaky, ongoing Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. Saguy asked that the operation be moved to a different locale, somewhere neutral, a place that would not impact the chance of peace. Rabin accepted his argument. He instructed the Mossad to change their plans.

  Shkaki, a terrorist with the blood of dozens of Israelis on his hands, a man with a bulldozer-like ability to get things done in the world of organized terrorism, lived in Damascus, and rarely left. Shabtai Shavit, the head of the Mossad, and others in the organization were forced to accept Rabin’s decision. Their plan, tailor-made for Damascus and ready to be executed at a moment’s notice, had to be shelved, perhaps indefinitely.

  The Mossad continued to collect intelligence on Shkaki, learning his routine and paying special attention to his travel plans. They needed a clean plan, something that would leave no Israeli prints. They learned that when Shkaki did leave Damascus, it was to one of two places—Tehran, on a direct flight, or Libya, which he reached either by ferry, via Malta, or plane, via Tunis. The Mossad chose the island of Malta. Saguy and the prime minister were pleased. All they had to do was wait. Once Caesarea was given the go-ahead, operations were frozen eight different times; once, out of a sudden concern for the assassins’ well-being just thirt
y seconds before they pulled the trigger. On October 28, 1995, Shkaki was shot dead outside the Diplomat Hotel in Malta. His killers, two combatants from Kidon, Caesarea’s assassination wing, fled the scene on a motorcycle, and left the country immediately.

  Israeli prime ministers had the power to take someone’s life with a nod of their head. The way those decisions were addressed often revealed a great deal about a leader’s character. They were far from the public eye when they met the heads of Mossad and they knew that nothing they said or did would be leaked to the public. The prime minister could, and did, act according to his or her conscience and worldview. Rabin was a ponderer, asking pesky and prying questions. He was pedantic, had a phenomenal memory, and demanded solid answers. He often sent Military Intelligence and Mossad officials packing. “It hasn’t matured,” he’d say in his slow baritone, leaving everyone to wonder if the timing was poor politically, the indictment insufficiently strong, or the man insufficiently guilty.

  The routine has been the same since Golda. The prime minister is given a top secret file with a picture of the proposed target, some background data, and a densely worded, multi-paged indictment. Most prime ministers avoided reading the indictment, skipping straight to the recommendation, which, of course, always urged death.

  At times intelligence information failed to translate into explicit guilt, but in the case of Munich, each prime minister, from Golda Meir to Yitzhak Rabin, by way of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres, thought that the vengeful killing of saya’ans and terrorists alike was the proper response to that dreadful massacre. Not one of them said “let it go.” Most of them never even asked the basic questions: Does this activist, implicated in the Munich Massacre, still have a role in terror attacks? Is he a threat today? Palatable words and titles like “logistical terror assistant” and “architect” were created, and would be found in the recommendation section of the indictments handed to the prime minister. But “architect” could easily refer to someone who once said something along the lines of “Italy could be a good place for an attack now.” For that, he could pay with his life.

  Prime Minister Menachem Begin trusted “our boys.” He did not examine details. Shimon Peres, in contrast, fired off numerous questions. He was not fond of assassination missions. That changed in 1996. At the time he was in an election campaign against right-wing Likud Party candidate Benjamin Netanyahu. During the three months leading up to the election, Islamic Jihad and Hamas carried out numerous deadly bus bombings and other terror attacks, claiming many Israeli lives and taking a toll on the national mood. Peres feared a high-profile attack on the eve of the elections, certain to sink his chances of winning. Peres turned to the Mossad. He asked them to prepare assassination missions that could be ready to go at a moment’s notice, carried out within twenty-four hours. He ruled out Syria (diplomatic negotiations) and Jordan (a close neighbor and friend), leaving only second-tier countries. Caesarea, displeased with the nature of the task, prepared a number of missions, targeting saya’ans. In the end, there was no attack and no Israeli response.

  Yizhak Shamir was the easiest prime minister to work with. As a former member of the Lechi, the pre-state Jewish underground, and of the Mossad, Shamir reveled in the details, and avoided political excuses. He never said, “I’m going to Paris for a diplomatic visit next week and it would be improper for there to be a mission there concurrently.” He was willing to authorize. One of the few times he refused to do so was in December 1987. Shamir was in the hospital at the time. Caesarea was in a good position to assassinate a senior member of Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Council (PFLP-GC). The man, allegedly responsible for numerous attacks against Israel, was on the hit list and the assassins were in place. Shabtai Shavit went to the hospital, seeking Shamir’s approval. When he returned, he told the expectant Mossad officers that Shamir had not been in the mood to talk about it, granting the PFLP-GC operative his life.

  Each prime minister’s military aide could receive all transmissions and codes as they were issued over the course of a mission in a very high-tech twenty-four-hour operations room. Prime ministers responded differently as missions unfolded. Some said, “Keep me posted.” Others, “Let me know when it’s over.”

  34 A KILLER FROM WITHIN

  TUNIS MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1991

  The annals of history will record a strange scene in the theater of the absurd that can define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The notorious terrorist Abu-Iyad, responsible for the Munich Massacre and other bloody attacks, was assassinated in Tunis in January 1991—not by Israeli assassins after a dogged two-decade chase, but rather by one of his own bodyguards, out of an ideological conviction that Abu-Iyad was overly conciliatory toward Israel. The killer, recruited by Abu Nidal’s group, a cruel and reactionary organization, was ordered to assassinate Abu-Iyad not long after he declared that a Palestinian state should rise alongside Israel, and not in place of it.

  Salah Khalaf, better known as Abu-Iyad, was one of the key figures in internal Palestinian politics. He, along with Yasser Arafat, was one of the founding fathers of Fatah. Early on, Abu-Iyad was considered a militant and a hard-liner, advocating an unflinching campaign of terrorism and violence against Israel and Jordan. As head of the United Security Apparatus he guided a cadre of young Palestinian operatives through the ranks, gaining their enduring admiration and devotion—men such as Fakhri Al-Omri, Atef Bseiso, Amin Al-Hindi, and Tawfiq Tirawi.

  Since the mid-1960s, Fatah’s earliest days, Abu-Iyad had been responsible for terror operations that claimed the lives of many Israelis, including the Olympic attack, remembered as the Munich Massacre. Despite his denials of both culpability and involvement in Black September, Abu-Iyad topped Israel’s Most Wanted list. Israel was driven by preventive considerations—to permanently halt the agile mind of the former philosophy teacher, who continuously conjured new and innovative attacks, always seeing them to fruition. The Israelis also wanted to make it clear to the terrorist activists and leaders that they were hunted for their sins, hoping to deter them and others from joining their ranks. Finally, and most important, the Israelis wanted to punish him, to exact revenge for Munich. Every Israeli intelligence officer dreamed of commanding the mission that would put Abu-Iyad six feet underground.

  Abu-Iyad, a Palestinian, born in the city of Jaffa in 1933, remembered, even took pride, in the close ties his family had with Jews in Palestine during the 1940s. His father spoke Hebrew, he said. One day before Israel declared its independence, his family fled on a small ship to Egypt-controlled Gaza, instantly becoming refugees along with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The day of flight was imprinted in the memory of the fifteen-year-old youth.

  A world-class orator, he would draw Palestinian crowds out of their seats even as he was seen ascending a podium. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest a fighter or a revolutionary, nor did he cultivate such an image. He was short, chubby, and solid; his face was round and full, his eyes were framed with bushy black eyebrows, and his thin, combed-back hair and mustache were graying. His dress was firmly middle-class, preferring an untailored blazer to the army uniform worn by Arafat and mimicked by many.

  He knew his life was in constant danger, and not just from Tel Aviv. The Mukhabarat, a generic name for Arab nations’ notorious internal secret-police apparatuses, sought to incapacitate him too. Jordan led the charge. Abu-Iyad was responsible for numerous assassination plans and several actual attempts to kill Jordan’s monarch, King Hussein. He spearheaded the operation in Khartoum to liberate Abu-Daoud, the grandiose plan to topple the king and initiate a revolution in Jordan in February 1972, and an assassination attempt on King Hussein at the Rabat Conference in Morocco in 1974, which was foiled with the help of a Mossad tip that was passed to Jordan through Moroccan intelligence.

  Abu-Iyad took precautions. Four armed guards took turns protecting him. But his fears only increased with time. In the spring of 1973, he heard
his peers gunned down in the middle of the night by IDF forces during the Spring of Youth operation. In the late 1970s a feud developed between the PLO and the Egyptian administration once the latter signed a peace agreement with Israel, turning its back on the Palestinian problem. His relationship with Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad was testy as well; Abu-Iyad attacked him repeatedly in his oratory.

  Abu-Iyad lived the life of the persecuted—far from his wife and six children, far from their suburban Cairo home, and without a permanent address. When he arrived at Fatah’s offices, it was always without advance notice and accompanied by a posse of armed guards.

  In Stateless, Abu-Iyad describes an attempt on his life in August 1973. As he tells it, he was working in the study of his Cairo home when a bodyguard interrupted him. There was a young Palestinian at the door; he insisted on delivering his message to Abu-Iyad personally. “I couldn’t refuse him,” Abu-Iyad writes. “As soon as he entered, he told me he had been sent to kill me, opening his attaché case and pulling out a pistol and a silencer. The young man said he had decided to confess out of fear of arrest or being killed during the assassination. In return, he asked that I keep him safe. He wanted to start a new life in one of the North African Arab countries; if that was impossible, then in one of the Socialist-bloc states. He said he was a Palestinian from the West Bank and his mission to kill me had been given to him by an Israeli security officer whose name he gave. After he had crossed the Jordan River on his way to Amman, where he was supposed to get on a plane, he was stopped by Jordanian police and taken in for questioning. After his mission was discovered, one of King Hussein’s officers, Falah Al-Rifa’i, promised him an extra cash prize if he succeeded in killing me.”