The murder of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics prompted Israel to adopt a strategy that continues to this day: deploying secret agents abroad to assassinate its enemies. Since Mossad intelligence launched Operation Wrath of God to track down senior terrorists it blamed for the Munich massacre, it has been covertly attacking Israel’s enemies abroad.
Half a century ago next week, Palestinian gunmen from the Black September terror group broke into the Olympic village and stormed the quarters of Israeli athletes and their coaches.
After a violent hostage drama, exacerbated by the blunders of the German security services, all Israelis were dead – sparking deep consternation in the Jewish state less than three decades after the Holocaust.
“It was a real shock to the Israeli population,” recalls Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister who commanded an elite military unit at the time.
“The combination of the nature of the killings and the helplessness of the athletes who were attacked and the fact that it was on German soil somehow resonates,” he told AFP.
The killings sparked “deep grief with great outrage” and a concerted drive to “take revenge, kill (those) involved” and prevent similar attacks in the future, he said.
The clandestine program was led by then-Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, Prime Minister Golda Meir and her counter-terrorism adviser Aharon Yariv, historian Michael Bar-Zohar said.
Initially, “After Munich, Golda Meir did not know what to do,” Bar-Zohar said.
The two security chiefs, both with “the aura of college professors,” met Meir, the Israeli historian said.
“They were timid, well dressed and said one thing: ‘Now we must destroy Black September’.”
The trio, aware that it would be nearly impossible to track down all members of Black September, instead devised a strategy to “crush the snake’s head” by killing the group’s leadership, Bar- said. Zohar.
“Golda was really hesitant,” he said. “Should she allow killings throughout Europe and the Middle East?
“She said yes’.”
Over the next few months, the heads of Black September and their Palestine Liberation Organization allies began to die under mysterious circumstances in Rome, Paris and Cyprus.
– Lipstick and Bombs –
Among the targets were three Palestinians, who were murdered in Beirut in April 1973 by a hit group dressed in women’s clothing.
One of the officers disguised in make-up and fake breasts was Barak, then a commander of the Sayeret Matkal unit deployed to assassinate Mohammed Youssef al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser.
The hit squad traveled by naval vessel and then smaller speedboats to reach Beirut, where they were met by Mossad agents with rental cars posing as tourists.
The team expected more than a dozen young men walking through an upscale part of Beirut to arouse suspicion.
“So we decided to ‘make some of us girls,'” said Barak, now 80. “I was the unit commander, but I had a baby face at the time, so I was one of the girls.
“I was a brunette, not a blonde, with lipstick and blue on the eye, and we took some military socks to fill our breasts,” he recalls.
The four officers disguised as women wore baggy pants, hid weapons in jackets and bags and were armed with hand grenades and explosives.
They split into small groups and made their way to the homes of their targets, but came under heavy fire. Two Israelis were killed, along with a number of Lebanese civilians and the three Palestinians.
Within hours, Barak was back home in Israel, where his wife questioned him about the eyeshadow and lipstick on his face.
“I couldn’t tell her,” the ex-prime minister recalls, happily adding that “she turned on the radio and there were discussions about what had happened”.
Hunting the ‘Red Prince’
However, such early successes may have made Israel overconfident, contributing to later failures.
Three months after the operation in Beirut, the Mossad believed it had located Ali Hassan Salameh, the head of operations of Black September, known as the “Red Prince”.
Israel sent assassins to the Norwegian city of Lillehammer, where they murdered Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi by mistaken identity.
The killers were “too sure of themselves,” said Bar-Zohar, who has written a series of books on Israeli intelligence, including the operation in Norway.
“They arrived in Lillehammer with false information… They were already pretty sure it was a routine operation and they ignored all the evidence showing it wasn’t him,” he said.
“They saw, for example, that the man they followed lived in a run-down neighborhood, that he cycled, that he went to the swimming pool alone. A terrorist chief does not do that.”
After killing the wrong man, three Israeli agents were arrested by Norwegian police and spent 22 months in prison.
Undeterred, the Mossad went ahead with a years-long operation to ensnare Salameh.
Israel sent an agent codenamed “D” to Beirut, who befriended the Palestinian and his wife Georgina Rizk, the beauty queen.
In a 2019 documentary broadcast by Israel’s Channel 13, D described his time undercover as “my real life” in Beirut, where he attended a sports club with Salameh and studied his habits and movements.
‘I considered him a friend and a mortal enemy at the same time,’ said D. ‘It’s not easy. You know, deep down, that he must die.’
In January 1979, nearly five years after the operation started, Salameh was killed by a car bomb in Beirut.
Targeted at Iran
The murder of a top Black September member did not end the killing spree.
Israel instead turned its sights to other targets, such as those it blamed for attacks on Israelis during the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprisings, and targets of its nemesis Iran.
Ronen Bergman, author of the book “Rise and Kill First” about Israel’s targeted killings, said the Munich attacks made Israel realize that “there would be no one else” to protect its own interests and citizens.
“There is a direct link between what happened then and what we see now,” he said.
Today “Israel uses targeted assassinations as one of its main weapons in its policy to defend national security interests,” he said.
Bergman pointed to the death of top Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose murder was attributed to Israel outside Tehran nearly two years ago.
The author said that while targeted killings were “really effective” against the organizers of attacks on Israelis, “there is still a debate about how effective the killing of nuclear scientists that began in 2007.”
“Those are very difficult to measure, but it is clear that Israel continues with the same kind of policy.”
Israel accuses Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, a goal Tehran denies, and vehemently opposes negotiations between the Islamic Republic and world powers reviving the shaky 2015 nuclear deal.
promoted
Few expect Israel’s “shadow war” with Iran and Mossad’s clandestine operations to end soon.
Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said his country will “do everything to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability”.
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