Taormina

The taken hostages of the Olympic Games of Munich (also called the Massacre of Munich ) took place during the Olympic Games of summer of 1972 with Munich in Germany. The September 5th, of the members of the Olympic team of Israel were taken as an hostage by members of the Palestinian organization black September.

The taking of hostage finished the September 6th in a blood bath , costing the life eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team, five of the eight members of the group and a police German.

The taking of hostages

Requirements

The group required the release and the passage in Egypt of 234 activists Palestinians, two Morrocan women, two Frenchwomen, Kozo Okamoto of the Red Army Japanese woman and six officers Syriens and Lebanese captive in Israel, as well as two other German prisoners Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader in Germany. Israeli the Prime Minister Golda Meir answered immediately and very firmly that there would be no negotiation. The German authorities, by the voice of their Chancellor Willy Brandt and of the Minister of Interior Department Hans-Dietrich Genscher, refused the offer of Israel to send a unit of the Israeli special forces in Germany. The German police force which took share with the operation did not have specific training with the rescue operations of hostages.

According to the journalist John K. Cooley, the attack was a nightmare for the Germans because the hostages were Juif S. Cooley wrote that the Germans offered to the Palestinians to give them all the money which they wanted if they released the hostages. They also offered to replace the Israeli athletes by German officers of high ranking. But the two offers were rejected (Cooley, 1973) because Mohammed Daoud Odeh, the brain of the taking of hostage, had given the order nothing to accept (the offer of an amount of money had been anticipated).

The deadlines for the execution of hostages were initially delayed three hours, then five hours moreover, by two official statements written in advance. The German authorities in vain tried to negotiate. The chief of the German police force Manfred Schreiber and Ahmed Touni, the Egyptian Olympic foreman, negotiated directly with the takers of hostages, still offering as much money than they would wish it. According to Cooley, they were seen answering: “The money does not have any importance for us; our lives do not have any importance for us”. The ambassadors Tunisia N and Libya N in Germany also tried to obtain concessions of the takers of hostages, but without success.

Mohammed Daoud Odeh, brain of the Palestinian group at the origin of the taking of hostages, in his book in collaboration with Gilles of Jonchay, Palestine: from Jerusalem to Munich , affirms that an official statement of its organization had been distributed to the Arab news agencies. The purpose of this one was to explain the reasons of the operation:

“Our revolutionary forces penetrated in force in the Israeli house at the Olympic village in Munich to obtain that the Israeli military authorities adopt a more human attitude with regard to the Palestinian people, that it is under the Israeli yoke or that it is found, because it was forced there, in exile. The occupation by the Israelis of Palestine involved for the inhabitants of Palestine the application of the most inhuman methods and most systematic of torture and colonialism, the destruction of villages, the death of thousands of people, the destruction without the least reason, by explosive, of houses inhabited by cruel civilians, interrogations for the prisoners, and of tortures characteristic of the most repressive modes.
“the massacre perpetrated by Israel against the population of Palestine creates the conditions of a racial persecution against 3 million Palestinians, and just as easily against the Eastern Jews, by uprooting a whole nation, and by removing any existence to him.
“Whereas the Rhodesia was seen refusing the admission with the Plays of Munich, the Israeli mode in Palestine did not have either the right to be allowed.
“At the same time, all the people enthusiast of peace of Europe and the world will always reject the Clerc's Office, the intrusion of a foreign body in the Middle East, which is Israel, like consequence of the American imperialism. The only objective of such an intrusion is to create in the area a State agent of America, holding the people of the Middle East under a permanent threat, militarizing the Mediterranean and making thus impossible the neutralization of this cradle of civilization.
“It is this role of Israel, State customer and carrying died the American imperialism, which will never be tolerated by the people enthusiast of peace.
“In the same way that no crime against humanity pays, that will not pay. That is the case in South Africa and Rhodesia, and the same applies to Palestine.
“the temporary victory of the Israelis in their conquest of Palestine will be able to never prevent the exercise of the rights of the Palestinian people in his fatherland and will never give the right to the occupant to represent Palestine occupied with a world gathering such as the Olympic Games. ”

The outcome

Here a version of the outcome of the taking of hostages of the Olympic Games of 1972:

The takers of hostages asked to be transported towards Cairo. The authorities made mine accept, and to 22:10, two helicopters transported the takers of hostages as well as the hostages to the air base of Fürstenfeldbruck, where a Boeing 727 awaited them. The takers of hostages thought of being on the way towards Riem, the international airport close to Munich. The authorities had envisaged to attack the takers of hostages to air base.

Five German marksmen were selected to shoot at the takers from hostages, but none of them had received specific training. They were selected because they practiced the shooting of competition over their spare time. At the time of a German investigation after the facts, an officer identified under the pseudonym of Marksman number 2 said: “I do not regard myself as a very precise gunner”.

The marksmen were positioned with the airport, but the authorities were surprised to discover that there were in fact eight takers of hostages. There was no tank S nor of armored vehicles deployed with the airport. According to John Cooley, one or perhaps two Israeli officers attended the operation. Serge Groussard, author of the book the medal of blood , quotes the chief of the Mossad Zvi Zamir and one of his right-hand men, but like observers only. Zamir (which admitted being present) said on several occasions that it received forever of request for council or assistance on behalf of the Germans to any moment during the rescue operation. The contained informations in article of the NewYork Times, suggesting that the Israeli Minister for Defense Moshe Dayan was present, were never confirmed.

The helicopters landed shortly after 22:30 and six of the takers of hostages left there. While four of the takers of hostages kept the pilots in respect with their weapons, two went to inspect the jet, and found it vacuum. Realizing to be fallen in a trap, they ran quickly again towards the helicopters, and towards 23:00, the German authorities gave the order to the marksmen to open fire.

The five German marksmen did not have a radio operator contact between them and could not thus coordinate their shootings. Their rifles did not have glasses nor of equipment of vision of night. In the chaos which followed, two takers of hostages being held close to a pilot were killed, a third mortally wounded while fleeing. The three takers of hostages remaining are reflected with cover, drew in answer and destroyed all the lights of the airport which they could while remaining with cover. A German police officer, Anton Fliegerbauer, were killed at the time of the shooting by a stray bullet. The pilots of helicopter managed to flee, but not the hostages because they were attached in the apparatus. The situation enlisa.

It then 75 minutes ago of exchanges of shots, during which the German police force asked for the assistance of armored vehicles tardily. The latter were not on the airport at the beginning of the shooting, and reflect more than 30 minutes to arrive because of many cars bottled the road of the airport, good number of Germans having come to see what occurred.

The armored vehicles arrived finally about midnight, making it possible to leave stagnation. According to Cooley, at midnight and 4 minutes on September 6th, one of the takers of hostages jumped of the first helicopter. It was turned and shot at the hostages, killing Springer, Halfin and Friedman, and wounding Berger. Then it took the pin out a grenade and threw it in the cockpit, where it exploded. Whereas the first helicopter burned, according to Cooley, the takers of hostages drew on the trucks from firemen to prevent them from approaching.

Before the fire of the first helicopter does not reach the tank of the second helicopter, two takers of hostages emerged from behind this one and made fire towards the police force, which retorted and killed them. The five hostages of the second helicopter died under the shots at the time of the battle. An investigation of police force determined that some of the hostages could have been killed by the police force in the fire of the action. However, a rebuilding of the events by Time Magazine suggests that one of the takers of hostages had killed them. The precise causes of died of these hostages could not be established with precision because the bodies were burned by the fire and the explosions of the helicopters.

Three of the takers of hostages, alive and relatively little wounded, were captured by the police force lengthened on the ground, two of them simulating death. The last taker of hostage was found by dogs and teargases 40 minutes later. With 00:30 this day, the battle was finished.

Consequences

The September 5th 1972, Golda Meir, then Prime Minister Israeli, had invited the other countries “to save our citizens and to condemn the unnamable criminal acts”. The massacre was largely condemned throughout the world, the king Hussein of Jordan qualified it “wild crime, crime against civilization… perpetrated by perverse spirits” (Cooley 1973).

The operation allowed an awakening of the Palestinian cause throughout the world thanks to the presence of the media come for the Olympic Games.

The bodies of the five Palestinians killed during the shooting of Fürstenfeldbruck were taken along in Libya, where they accepted funeral of hero and were buried with the military honors.

The German authorities imprisoned the three takers of surviving hostages, and created soon the cell of fight against terrorism GSG-9, able more effectively to help the hostages if such an incident has suddenly reproduced.

The September 9th, of the Israeli planes bombarded bases of the Liberation organization of Palestine (PLO) in Syria and to the Lebanon as reprisals (Morris 1999), as well as Palestinian refugee camps, an attack which was condemned by the Safety advice of UNO. One counts more than 200 deaths Palestinian, in majority in the civil population.

The October 29th was brought back that a German plane of the Lufthansa had been diverted by kidnappers requiring the release of the three members of black September selected captive on standby to be judged. Safady and Al-Gasheys was consequently released by Germany. Certain observers suspectent the German government to have released the terrorists to demolish heavy task to have to judge them (Reeve 2001).

“To avenge Munich”, Mossad, within the framework of the Operation Anger of God, takes for target of the persons in charge of the PLO, some of the silent partners supposed thus that important leaders of the movement. Thus, the representatives of the PLO in Italy, in France and in Cyprus are the first people with being killed: Wael Zwaiter, Mahmoud Hamchari and Hussein Béchir Aboul Kheir. At the same time, the representatives in Algeria and Libya are mutilated: Ahmed Wafi and Moustapha Awad Zeid. The list of died and of mutilated will not cease increasing until the January 15th 1991, when he assassinates for the first time of the organizers of Munich (Abou Iyad and Abou Mohammed).

Assassinated Israeli sportsmen

Here names of the 11 Israeli sportsmen assassinated at the time of this taking of hostages: Yosef Gottfreund, Eliezaar Halfen, Yakov Springer, Andre Spitzer, Zeev Friedman, Kehat Schor, Mark Slavin, Amitzur Shapira, David Berger, Yosef Romano and, Moshe Weinberg.

Sources

'' Time Magazine '', August 5th, 2002
'' CBS News '', September 5th, 2002
the files of '' CBC Television ''
'' BBC News '' August 20th, 2004
'' The Guardian '', September 7th, 1972
Inserted MSN
Calahan, A.B. (1995) '' The Israeli Response to the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre and the Development off Independent Covert Action Teams ''
Cooley, J.K. (London, 1973), Green March Black September: The Story off the Palestinian Arabs ISBN 0714629871
Dahlke, Matthias (Munich 2006), Der Anschlag auf Olympia '72. Die politischen Reaktionen auf den internationalen Terrorismus in Deutschland , Martin Meidenbauer Verlag ISBN 3899755839.
Daoud, Mr. (Abu Daoud) (New York, 2002) Memoirs off has Palestinian Terrorist ISBN 1559704292
Khalaf, Salah (Abu Iyad) (Tel Aviv, 1983) Without has Homeland: Conversations with Eric Roller
Morris, B. (New York, 1999 and 2001), Righteous Victims: In History off the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-2000 , Vintage Books edition ISBN 0679744754
Reeve, S. (New York, 2001), One Day in September: the full story off the 1972 Munich Olympic massacres off and Israeli revenge operation “Wrath God” ISBN 1559705477

See too

Munich , a film carried out by Steven Spielberg left the January 25th 2006, reporting the event and the tracking organized by the Mossad which followed.
the Épée of Gédéon is a Téléfilm américano - Canadian with suspense carried out in 1986 by Michael Anderson.
One day in September (One day in September), documentary film of Kevin Macdonald left on January 25th, 2006, reporting the day of the taking of hostages by images of files and interviews of which one of them is that of the last surviving terrorist.

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