Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response (24 page)

EPILOGUE

Israel’s intention after the Munich Massacre was to strike back at Fatah’s senior Black September officials, to identify and kill those who had sent the murderous squad to Munich—as well as anyone else who persistently targeted Israelis abroad. That message, delivered with a bullet or a bomb, would, it was hoped, deter and hinder terrorist capabilities, and, certainly, satisfy Israel’s thirst for revenge and punishment. Munich was the trigger, and for many years, assassination became a new tool in the war on terror.

However, members of the intelligence community soon realized that despite their unwavering devotion to the cause, which they saw as a mission of national importance, they were unable to exact a price from the top-level leaders. Men like Abu-Daoud, the commander of the Munich mission, and Abu-Iyad, deputy to Arafat and the true architect of the Olympic terror attack, remained beyond reach, unscathed. The combination of poor intelligence-gathering capacities on the one hand, and the flight of top leaders underground on the other, made operational plans against them nearly impossible. When, on rare occasions, the Mossad was ready to go, the risk to Caesarea combatants suspended the mission, often at the last minute.

The inability to strike back at Fatah’s top Black September leaders was at odds with the rousing calls, from the defense establishment, the Knesset, and, primarily, the public, to settle the score. A compromise of sorts was born from this untenable situation: the government agreed to allow the Mossad and Military Intelligence to conduct their target search a few notches beneath the Fatah’s shrouded upper echelons, thereby enabling a seemingly fitting response, but one that, from 1972 to 1973, claimed the lives of numerous low-level, easily accessible activists—along with the more significant targets killed during Operation Spring of Youth.

Those targeted during those years were not directly connected to the Munich Massacre. Yet they were profiled in ways that implied direct culpability. One would be presented, through leaks to the media, as the “senior Black September representative in Paris,” another as the “Black September leader in Italy.” Such titles not only satisfied the prime minister’s and the nation’s desire for revenge and resolution, but also eased the bitterness of the pill that European nations were forced to swallow, as Israel, with considerable chutzpah, disregarded their sovereignty time and again.

In those days, the Israeli public preferred to sidestep the question of whether or not it was just to kill Wael Zu’aytir, the translator of
One Thousand and One Nights.
The public’s faith in the Israeli defense establishment was unwavering. Everyone bought into the evolving myth of the Mossad’s infallibility. The Mossad always got their man; if someone was found dead, then they must be guilty. The myth was so potent that it spread to the Palestinian Diaspora. An assassinated Palestinian, even someone thought to be completely outside the fray of the armed struggle, was immediately elevated to the status of hero of the armed Palestinian resistance. The Mossad, after all, had taken the trouble to track him and kill him hundreds of miles from home.

The myth’s power grew exponentially in Palestinian minds after Operation Spring of Youth. Israel’s ability to attack and kill Arafat’s deputy in his own bedroom left an indelible mark on all terrorists and activists. The threat of a sudden death followed them everywhere. Not even the incompetent and fatal blunder in Lillehammer could diminish the Mossad’s aura of invincibility.

Thousands of officers, analysts, and combatants in the Mossad and Military Intelligence had no doubt that, in their pursuit of Palestinian activists, they were fulfilling the will of their people and were embarked on a mission of supreme national importance—spearheading the war on Palestinian terrorism. As events unfolded, they believed in their hearts that the assassinations they carried out were worthy acts, the evidence of guilt always sufficient to warrant death. The climate was different then. The covert operatives of the Mossad and Military Intelligence had been chosen to deliver justice in a distant land—and their eagerness to act was extraordinary.

As the desire to avenge the murder of the athletes subsided, the utility of assassinations—if not their justness, which is well beyond the scope of this book—became clear. Assassinations were seen as the reason that Palestinian terror grew silent in Europe. Buoyed by their success, Israel used the same tool in Lebanon in the 1980s.

For twenty years, almost no public cost-benefit analyses were conducted on the subject of assassinations. In 1992, Israeli air force helicopters fired hellfire missiles into the car of Abbas Musawi, head of the Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah; Hezbollah responded, two months later, with an attack on the AMIA building in Argentina, claiming 196 lives. Deterrence had become a two-way street, and now a public debate erupted over whether assassinating the heads of terrorist organizations was worth it. In January 1996 Israeli agents assassinated “The Engineer,” Yihya Ayash, a man responsible for countless terror attacks and one of the fathers of the tactic of suicide bombing. Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization he belonged to, responded with multiple bombings. Again, the public debated whether Ayash’s assassination was worth the price. When there was no reprisal, there was no discussion. In 1995, Mossad combatants killed Fatkhi Shkaki, head of Islamic Jihad. There was no counterattack—the organization was paralyzed for years—and no debate.

The justness, efficacy, and value of assassinations have been debated throughout the current conflict. Strike and counterstrike have come in rapid succession. The debate, ebbing and flowing, remains unresolved.

APPENDIX: THE KOPEL REPORT

The fifteen-page top secret report came out in only three copies. Pinchas Kopel, Moshe Kashti, and Avigdor Bartel did exactly as Golda had asked: the anemic report refrained from accusing anyone of negligence or demanding the dismissal of any high-ranking officials and officers. Instead, Kopel and company passed the buck to the head of the Shabak. He, the report suggested, “can draw conclusions, as he sees fit, about those officials who are singled out in this report for unbecoming conduct in all matters concerning the security and safety of the Olympic delegation, as it was defined before the Munich disaster.”

The report concluded, “The organizational structure and existing procedures of security for Israeli delegations abroad are not sufficient to address the current situation. Therefore, it is suggested that a new department be created in the Shabak to exclusively handle all matters of official security abroad. The new department will serve as the sole organization charged with dispensing advice and providing security for delegations as the government sees fit.” The Kopel Report dryly conveys the chain of events that led to the security failures in Munich.

When a few, minimal conclusions from the report were talked about, it drew fire from the Knesset and the press. Many columnists and politicians expected an earthquake: they received a tremor. Yosef Harmelin, head of the Shabak, recommended the termination of employment for the embassy security officer in Bonn, Germany, and two security officers in the Shabak, including the commander of the security division.

To the grieving families the measures were insufficient. At the special parliamentary session convened after the massacre, Ilana Romano, the widow of Yossef Romano, turned to Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon and asked him what the government planned to do about the Israeli security lapses. Allon informed her that three security officials had been removed from their posts. When asked to clarify whether removed meant fired or rotated through the system, Allon answered admonishingly, “Would you like to see their families starve?”

Despite pressure, the report was never made public. It was sent to be buried in the state archives. Accounts of its conclusions and general tone varied wildly. Some columnists labeled it scathing, others bland and lukewarm. Twenty years after the massacre, in the summer of 1992, Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano met with Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin in his office in Tel Aviv. Spitzer asked Rabin to see the classified report, promising that she would read it to satisfy her own curiosity, but refrain from divulging its contents. “The report is important to me,” she says. “I wanted to know how the Israeli authorities addressed the failures.” Having never seen the contents of the report, Rabin asked his chief of staff, Eitan Haber, to hunt it down in the state archives, look it over, and recommend a course of action. At a different meeting several weeks later the matter of the report was brought up again. Haber told Spitzer that he would not be willing to show her so as much as its cover.

For the next thirteen years, the report lay undisturbed in the archives. In early 2005, thirty-two years after it was written, I issued a formal request to the manager of the state archives in Jerusalem to examine the Kopel Report. I received a negative response. The Shabak, I was told, is still against releasing the document. On February
15, 2005,
I wrote to the Shabak spokesperson requesting that they reevaluate the classified nature of the report. Several days later she responded. The Shabak had no objection to the report being made public. And so it was.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I began this book, it proved difficult to penetrate the Mossad’s wall of silence surrounding the assassination operation following the Munich Massacre. Gradually, I earned the trust of a few key officers; I also learned that I was the first person outside their inner circle that they had spoken to. Their trust earned me the confidence of others. I thus, in the course of researching this book, conducted extensive interviews with more than fifty individuals, including ex-heads of units in the Mossad and Israeli Intelligence; former combatants and senior analysts; and former heads of the Mossad. I also spoke with high-ranking officials on the Palestinian side. Most of my sources insisted on anonymity, for their own safety and protection. In some cases I have changed their names or referred to them by initials. For purposes of accuracy, I sometimes, when I felt it necessary, gave individuals described the opportunity to review my account and to comment on it. When possible, interviews were cross-checked for accuracy. I also examined internal and top secret government documents such as the Kopel Report and examined firsthand many of the sites described in this book, from Paris to Munich. In some cases, for dramatic effect, minor details of certain instances have been changed, in keeping with the known habits and demeanor of participants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Some of the sources that helped me write this book prefer not to be thanked in writing. For these former Mossad, Military Intelligence, and Shabak officers, secrecy is both habit and necessity. They would have liked their names in print, but fear of revenge, exacted on them and their family members by the children and grandchildren of the assassinated, kept them from revealing their name and rank, and I have obscured both in these pages. I could not in good conscience assuage that fear. All I can do is thank them anonymously for their willingness to reveal, assist, explain, and correct my descriptions of events they took part in. More remains unknown than known, but thanks to these officers, analysts, combatants, and commanders, the public is given the opportunity to examine previously unviewed episodes from within their covert world. These dedicated, uniformly shrewd people, many of whom I now consider as friends, did this without taking credit. In an effort to preserve their anonymity, I’ve changed some of their names.

This is also the place to thank all of my supportive friends and acquaintances, who provided invaluable help during the research and writing stages of the manuscript, enriching it with their insights, comments, and corrections: Colonel (res.) Amnon Biran, Colonel (res.) Muki Betzer, Yossi Smandar, Yoav and Orly Simon, Shlomi Kenan, Netta Ziv-Av, Aviv Levy, Nitza Tzameret, Ofer Lefler, Moshe Shai, Naomi Politzer, and Shimshon Issaki in Israel; Felice Maranz and Yaala Ariel-Joel in the United States; Guy Cohen in Munich; and François Gibault and Yael Scemama, my French connections in Paris.

Special thanks to Colonel (res.) Avner Druck, for his extended and genuine efforts; Colonel (res.) Yossi Daskal, for his balanced perspective; Ziv Koren, our talented and well-connected photography editor; Ankie Spitzer, for unconditionally opening her heart and sharing her experiences; Lisa Beyer, for her endless insight and encouragement; Matt Rees, Jerusalem’s
Time
magazine bureau chief, for all his guidance and professional insights; Jean Max, for her sharp editing eye; Mitch Ginsburg, for his tireless wit, faithful translation, and dedication to the mission; Deborah Harris, my ceaselessly supportive agent, for granting me the opportunity to tackle this project; Philippa Brophy, our American agent, who oversees the important details of our lives; Will Murphy, my editor, a brilliant man, who conjured the idea of writing this book well before it became popular.

Final thanks to my family: my dear mother, Atara Klein, who listened night after night to my progress reports and offered unwavering support; to my beloved daughter, Nitzan, who peppered me with eye-opening questions and is the light of my life; and, ultimately, to my incomparable wife, Michal, who questioned, analyzed, advised, and unflinchingly accepted the role of husband and wife at home for the past few months.

A
ARON
J. K
LEIN
is
Time
magazine’s military and intelligence affairs correspondent in the Jerusalem Bureau. He was the recipient of the 2002 Henry Luce Award and has been a consultant for CNN.

Klein teaches a course in the relationship between media and the military establishment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Master’s Program. He was the military/security correspondent and analyst for
Hadashot
and
Al-Hamishmar,
two of Israel’s leading national newspapers. He is a contributor to
Malam,
the journal for former IDF Intelligence, Mossad, and Internal Security Agency officers.

Aaron Klein holds an M.A. in history from the Hebrew University and is a captain in the IDF’s Intelligence.

Klein, who lives in Jerusalem, is married and has a daughter.