[Reformatted] Burning down the olympics

[Greg Broiles]

At 11:45 AM 1/11/2002 -0800, Eric Cordian wrote:
> >> Terrorism also struck the Olympics in Munich in 1972 when 11 Israeli
> >> athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen.
>
>Not quite.  11 Israeli athletes were captured by some Palestinians.  They
>were killed when the Israeli military attacked the site where they were
>being held, and slaughtered everything that moved.

It's my understanding that one hostage was killed early in the standoff, 
and that another team member (a coach?) was shot but escaped as the 
hostages were being captured initially.

Some time later, the German authorities provided the terrorists with a bus 
- the hostages and terrorists boarded the bus and drove to the airport, 
where two helicopters were waiting for them.

There - on the airport tarmac - there was a gunfight between (AFAIK) German 
police and the terrorists, which led to killing all of the remaining 
hostages, many of the terrorists, and some police.

A few months later, with the cooperation of the German government, a German 
airplane was captured in a faux hijacking, and those "hostages" were 
exchanged for the remaining terrorists in German custody. All but one of 
them have subsequently been assassinated by Mossad.

"One Day In September" is a documentary about this which isn't impossible 
to find on DVD or VHS.

.. or are you saying that the airport firefight took place between Israeli 
soldiers in German police uniforms and the terrorists?

That's not unimaginable, but the Israelis seem more competent, and inclined 
towards overwhelming force and rapid attack - see, e.g., their Operation 
Gift on 12/28/68, where three teams totalling 64 men destroyed 14 planes on 
the runway at Beirut International Airport in retaliation for a November 
attack on an El Al airliner. (See, e.g., 
<http://www.isayeret.com/operations/gift.htm> or 
<http://www.idf.il/english/history/tshura.stm>.)

I don't have any personal knowledge about this - probably nobody on the 
list does - but I'm pretty skeptical of the claim that the airport attack 
was an Israeli creation - not because I think they're saints, but because 
it wasn't their style. Besides, it's hard to imagine that Germany would 
allow an Israeli military force to land at a German airport, take it over, 
use it to ambush terrorists, then blame the resulting casualties on the 
local authorities .. or that Israel would be able to do that without German 
cooperation. That just doesn't sound like something a government would do, 
especially not a German government dealing with Israel.


--
Greg Broiles -- gbroiles at parrhesia.com -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961
Eliminate due process, civil rights? It's the Constitution, stupid!