Rings Of Fire

It’s become as iconic as any gold medal or world record. The grainy black and white photograph of the concrete apartment balcony, a man in a balaclava peering out over the edge, is now as intrinsic a part of Olympic history as Jesse Owens, Cold War boycotts and the Chariots of Fire theme music. Immortalised in film as both sensationalist Israeli propaganda (One Day in September) and hand-wringing, pseudo-psychological drama (Munich), the 1972 kidnapping of a group of Israeli athletes and coaches competing at the Munich Games by armed faction Black September placed the Palestinian cause at the forefront of international politics – but left an indelible stain on sport.

Not that the fate of the 11 Israelis, slaughtered amid a bungled rescue operation at the Munich’s airport, generated much global sympathy for Palestinian national aspirations. It merely ushered in a wave of Israeli reprisals, including the assassination of all but one of the surviving kidnappers in Operation Wrath of God. But as the bodies of the dead Palestinians were given hero funerals in Libya, and with much of the initial condemnation focusing on the actions of the German security forces, Munich 72 was hailed in the Arab world as a courageous strike that highlighted the mounting injustices of the occupation.

One of the masterminds behind the operation was Mohammad Daoud Odeh, aka Abu Daoud. He was a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council whose activities had already seen him sentenced to death in Jordan. In 1981, he was shot 13 times in a Warsaw hotel cafeteria, only to chase down his shooter. He still takes pride in the plot and
Operation “Ikreet and Ikfar Bar’oom”. "We chose that name to remind the world of Palestine’s destroyed villages and the residents who were removed from their homes," Abu Daoud said. These were two Palestinian villages that were destroyed in 1948 in the early days of the occupation.

"The goal of the operation was to punish the Mossad agents spread around Europe who were recruiting Palestinian students as informers, exploiting their need for money and the fact that they were away from their families. Also, at this point we had thousands of detainees in Israeli prisons, and we set a list of 200-250 prisoners who were under the harshest sentences and facing the worst torture. We were hoping to exchange them with the Israeli athletes. But the most important goal was bringing our issue to 500 million people around the world – people who love sports and who don’t care about other people’s tragedies." Here, Abu Daoud gives us the details: 

The idea
The idea of an operation during the Olympics came up by coincidence. I was not interested in sports at the time; I was in Bulgaria buying $5,000 worth of guns – about 10 pistols, we were pretty poor back then! – and that was when Abu Iyad called me up to Rome where we met with Abu Mohammad Omari. Abu Muhammad followed sports and he informed us that a youth Palestinian organisation had filed a request to participate in the 1972 Olympics and were denied. I took the train to Munich and realised there was a possibility for an operation. So I then headed to Beirut to put the plan together. I set the operation budget at the same $5,000, plus the plane tickets for the guys. Abu Iyad selected the team to carry
it out and sent them to our training camp in Libya.

The preparation
I went to Munich and asked a Palestinian girl I knew to show me around the Olympic village – you know, for sight-seeing. She convinced the guards to let us in from the back gates (usually there is a lot more badge checking at the front gates), and we went to visit the Israeli residence. We told them we were Brazilian tourists and asked for some flags and stickers. That was one week before the games began. Two days later, two of the guys – the operation leaders – arrived and I took the risk of playing the same game again. We blended in among thousands of tourists walking around the village and visited the Israeli quarters again.

The team
The first two to arrive where “Che”, the operation leader, and Mohammad Massalha, the lead negotiator. He had studied chemical engineering in Germany before joining the Fadayeen and spoke German well. The six other guys arrived two at a time over the rest of the week. Most of them were from Lebanese refugee camps.

The plan
I chose a location where we could cut the wire fence around the village and sneak the guys in. Abu Iyad flew from Paris to deliver the arms to Frankfurt, in regular travel luggage – four briefcases. Airports security rules have changed dramatically after Munich! The briefcases contained eight Kalashnikovs, ten hand grenades and some ammunition, and I stored them at the train station lockers. We prepared two statements in English and German, explaining that we do not want to harm anyone. Our fighters would gather the Israeli athletes in one room and ask for the release of our prisoners.

Civilians or soldiers?
When we chose to target athletes, we knew that they had served, or were even still serving, in the Israeli army. Their biographies are available on the internet and you can see that some of them were even involved in military operations. We did not target a plane with innocent women and children. We knew that in Israel an athlete means a soldier.
 
America’s helping hand
We arrived at the fence at around 2am and heard a big fuss. At the back gate, 25 to 30 drunken American athletes were trying to climb the gate after partying at the media centre. This was a great opportunity; I stood under the gate and started helping the Americans to climb over. And then I started alternating: I would lift an American girl then one of our guys, and so on, one by one. I lifted about four of our guys while the other four just blended in climbing the gate with the Americans.

In the building
The fighters each carried a duffle bag containing a gun, a rope, a knife and food supplies for 24 hours. They apprehended the Israelis, although there were only 12 as the others were out on a trip, and put them in one room. One Israeli jumped out of the window and ran to an adjacent building. The orders were very strict: shooting is only for self-defence. He was allowed to flee. But then a wrestler, who had immigrated from Russia less than two months earlier, tried to muscle the rifle out of the hands of one our guys, and that’s when he got shot dead.
The Israelis were scared, but there was some connection on the personal level. When one said he was cold, one of our guys gave him his jacket, and when we asked “what do you think we’re going to do to you?”, the Israeli answered: “Nothing. You just gave me your jacket, how are you going to shoot me?”

The negotiations
Within five minutes, the German authorities knew about the incident and Mohammad passed our demands to them. They offered Mohammad a lot of money, among other things. But Golda Meir [Israel’s Prime Minister] said she would not release a single Fada’y in exchange for the athletes. Instead, she sent the head of Israeli intelligence to Germany to put together the plan to liquidate the Fidayeen and free the hostages. Due to the sensitivity of the German-Israeli relations, the Germans were blackmailed into executing Israel’s aggressive plan. Our alternative plan was to ask for a helicopter or a bus to take us all to the airport and from there to any Arab country. Killing the athletes was never an option.

At the airport
At around 9pm, our guys and the Israeli athletes were lifted in two helicopters to a military airfield with a single Lufthansa plane waiting for us. The Fadayeen were a little suspicious since the helicopter flight took longer than anticipated, and they asked to check the aeroplane before getting on it. The Israeli head of intelligence told the Germans: “These terrorists are Arabs and I know how they fight. If you kill one or two the rest will surrender. When they go to check the plane, kill two and the rest will surrender.” As Mohammad and Che got onto the plane, two bright light projectors were aimed at them, and they found themselves under heavy fire.

The battle
Mohammad and Che were injured and they started returning fire. The other guys around the helicopters also started firing their automatic rifles. The Israeli athletes, who were in the helicopters, were trapped in the crossfire. Nobody can tell how one of the helicopters exploded – maybe one of the German bullets hit the fuel tank or something. The battle took about one hour even though our guys had a total of 500 bullets among them. The German machine guns were firing heavily from the towers surrounding the airfield. Once the guns stopped, German tanks approached the airfield to find the ten Israeli athletes dead. Mohammad and Che and three others were killed, while the three others were badly injured.

The injured three
The Germans wanted to finish this hot potato issue, so they gave us an offer: if we hijack a Lufthansa plane, take it for a few rounds in the air, we can then exchange it with our three injured fighters. But we refused. We were revolutionaries with a closed mind which would not accept compromises. But Wadee’ Haddad had a deeper vision, so he took the offer, took the money and freed our injured fighters.

Israeli retaliation
Isreal has now killed many Palestinians who they claimed were behind the Munich incident or part of Black September. That is a lie. I can take them one by one and prove otherwise: Wael Zuitar, Palestine’s representative in Italy, was a philosopher and politician who never carried a weapon – but he was brilliant at attracting people to the Palestinian cause. Mahmood Hamshari, who worked in Paris, was also an influential figure who rallied people around the Palestinian cause, and they planted a bomb in his phone speaker. What does he have to do with Munich? Where did he participate in Munich? I was in charge of that operation and I take the full responsibility just to expose the Israeli propaganda and deceit in front of the world.

Looking back
Although we feel sorry for our martyrs and for the Israelis to a certain degree – as human beings – the operation was successful because it forced the Palestinian issue into 500 million houses worldwide. It delivered a message, and even though some people thought of us as killers they could not help but wonder: “Who are those Palestinians?” It put Palestine on the world map; prior to that even those sympathising with us did not know what Palestine was.

Abu Daoud’s interview appears in NOX courtesy of al-Jazeera, which broadcast its version of the Munich massacre on Shahid Ala al-Asr.