Munich 1972

This compelling book provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission. Eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications, interweaving the political drama surrounding the Games with the athletic spectacle, itself hardly free of controversy. Writing with flair and an eye for telling detail, Large brings to life the stories of the indelible characters who epitomized the Games. With the Olympic movement in constant danger of terrorist disruption, and with the fortieth anniversary of the 1972 tragedy upon us in 2012, the Munich story is more timely than ever.

At 4:30 a.m. on September 5, 1972, a band of Palestinian terrorists took eleven Israeli athletes and coaches hostage at the Summer Olympics in Munich. More than 900 million viewers followed the chilling, twenty-hour event on television, as German authorities desperately negotiated with the terrorists. Finally, late in the evening, two helicopters bore the terrorists and their surviving hostages to Munich's little-used Fürstenfeldbruck airfield, where events went tragically awry. Within minutes all of the Israeli athletes, five of the terrorists, and one German policeman were dead. Why did the rescue mission fail so miserably? And why were the reports compiled by the German authorities concealed from the public for more than two decades? Reeves takes on a catastrophe that permanently shifted the political spectrum with a fast-paced narrative that covers the events detail by detail. Based on years of exhaustive research, One Day in September is the definitive account of one of the most devastating and politically explosive tragedies of the late twentieth century, one that set the tone for nearly thirty years of renewed conflict in the Middle East.

The 1972 Munich Olympics were intended to showcase the New Germany and replace lingering memories of the Third Reich. In this cultural and political history of the Munich Olympics, the authors set these games into both the context of 1972 and the history of the modern Olympiad.

The first full account, based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the Israeli response–a lethal, top secret, thirty-year-long antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers. 1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror and remains a scar on the collective conscience of the world. Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vows to track down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin’s words, “run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth.” A secret Mossad unit, code named Caesarea, is mobilized, a list of targets drawn up. Thus begins the Israeli response–a mission that unfolds not over months but over decades. The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one has known the real story. Until now. Award-winning journalist Aaron Klein’s incisive and riveting account tells for the first time the full story of Munich and the Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. With unprecedented access to Mossad agents and an unparalleled knowledge of Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth and misinformation that have permeated previous books, films, and magazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black September and other terrorist groups. Spycraft, secret diplomacy, and fierce detective work abound in a story with more drama than any fictional thriller. Burning questions are at last answered, including who was killed and who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and which were missed. Truths are revealed: the degree to which the Mossad targeted nonaffiliated Black September terrorists for assassination, the length and full scope of the operation (far greater than previously suspected), retributive acts against Israel, and much more. Finally, Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important counterterrorism campaigns in history.

Three people living in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem embark on distinct journeys that converge at “the file”; their efforts to admit Palestine to the Olympics in the early twentieth century. Their pivotal roles in history have been purposely omitted from official record, kept secret, or forgotten. Why? Because of the “Nazi Olympics” in 1936 in Berlin. And because of the death in 1972 of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in the Munich Massacre. This book narrates the previously untold history of a Palestine Olympic Committee recognized before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It sheds light on some of the darkest events in sport history, exposing secretive relationships behind the doors of the Jerusalem YMCA, Nazi agitation, arrests, internments, and other intrigue in the complicated history of Israeli and Palestinian sport. The File breaks new ground at the intersection of sport and politics—illuminating the hope, tension, and horror of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian refugees, and the resulting guerrilla attack at the Olympics in Munich in 1972—and reveals a handful of heroes whose impact on athletes and international sport competitions is still felt today. Consultant and researcher San Charles Haddad weaves a true and masterful tale of forgotten personalities in a conflict characterized by unabated venom, bringing hope and new questions in his wake. What will be the future of Israel and Palestine, and how might sport play a restorative role in the twenty-first century?

Discloses the Israeli plan to assassinate the known terrorist leaders responsible for the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes and chronicles the story of the hit-squad's leader, a man morally destroyed by his mission.

This compelling volume examines the historical background of the Munich Olympics Massacre as well as the controversies surrounding the event. Readers will be intrigued by the entire chapter of personal narratives from people who lived through the massacre including an Israeli athlete who recounts losing his teammates, and a Israeli wrestler's story that took him from the Soviet Union to Israel to Munich.

An attack at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games would produce one of the defining images of international terrorism. The chilling photo of a hooded man peering from a balcony in the Olympic Village would be viewed worldwide as a horrific symbol of global terrorism. The man wearing a mask with cutout slits for his eyes was a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. He and his fellow terrorists had seized 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation and were holding them hostage. They would kill them all as the tragedy unfolded. What had been dubbed the _happy Olympicsî would be forever remembered as the Munich massacre. The Olympics would never the same.