The German government had agreed to the demands of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi and released the bodies of the five dead terrorists, who were flown to Tripoli that morning aboard a private jet. Lieutenant Colonel Mor stood in the doorway watching the fuzzy screen for a few more minutes. Although Branch 4’s antenna left a lot to be desired, the events could still be followed. They saw the sea of people bearing the coffins on upturned palms from Martyr’s Square to the Sidi Munaydir cemetery. They listened to the eulogies. The dead terrorists were called “holy martyrs”—shuhada; their mission, “one of the loftiest, bravest, in the history of mankind.” The crowd began chanting in Arabic, “We are all Black September.” For days that chant reverberated in rallies throughout the Arab world—in Tripoli, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad—underscoring the difference between right and wrong, terrorism and bravery, in the eyes of the democratic West and the Islamic East.
The announcer on the Cairo-based PLO radio station, the “Voice of Palestine,” was also turning his attention to the funeral procession of the five fallen shuhada. He reported the eight terrorists stated in their joint will, written just hours before their death, that their collective funds, totaling $500 and 37 German marks, were to be used in the service of the Palestinian revolution. The will read: “We are neither killers nor bandits. We are persecuted people who have no land and no homeland. We were willing to give up our lives from the very first moment.” The murderers declared in their will that the nation’s youth should not be afraid to sacrifice their lives for the greater goal. Every drop of spilled Palestinian blood will turn to oil and light the nation aflame with the fire of victory and independence, they said. The will contained no apology, regret, or remorse.
Lieutenant Colonel Mor left the room and walked through the other sections of Branch 4, where around twenty officers and enlisted men were huddled in small quarters despite the late hour, addressing the virtually Sisyphean task of intelligence gathering, searching for any shred of information relevant either to Munich or to future attacks. Everyone was aware that many were already eager to mimic the “success” of the Olympic attack.
Lieutenant Colonel Mor rubbed his hands together, satisfied. The following morning Branch 4 was set to open its new department—Overseas Terrorism, which would concentrate on collecting intelligence about terrorist organizations’ plans against Jews and Israelis beyond the borders of the state. Additional office space for the new department would be assigned in a few weeks. The inauguration of the Overseas Terrorism department was a sign that Military Intelligence was rapidly learning the lessons of Munich.
Another result of the Munich attack was the arrival, days earlier, amidst much fanfare, of the new TV. Mor had personally requested it. He explained, “It was important we see and hear what was happening in the streets of Beirut and the rest of the Arab world. We needed more than a newspaper headline. What we wanted was to be exposed to a variety of voices and views. We knew their intentions but we needed to understand the hues and shades of their thought.”
Yet another tool to come their way was a new computer, the first in the IDF’s Military Intelligence division. Although everyone eagerly anticipated its arrival, no one at Branch 4 had any idea what to do with it. Their initial assignment would be to feed it tens of thousands of intelligence files.
Mor returned to his office and opened the top secret incoming telex file. Nothing noteworthy. Mor was still lacking operable intelligence. He had snippets of isolated information, tiny pieces of a sprawling puzzle. All he could report for certain was that a senior-ranking member of Fatah was responsible for the massacre.
“The massacre at Munich helped us understand that we would have to deal with a new subject that we had never before encountered—terror attacks against Israeli targets abroad,” Lieutenant Colonel Mor later explained to me. “An attack on foreign territory gave the Palestinians a distinct advantage. They received international attention and our job to root out terrorists and prevent future attacks got that much harder. In terms of intelligence gathering, it meant starting from scratch, from the foundations. We didn’t have hard, dependable facts. The massacre came as a complete shock; it knocked us off our feet and forced us to act under immense pressure.”
At 1000 hours on Tuesday, September 12, a special parliamentary session opened in Jerusalem. All 120 members of Knesset, as well as scores of guests, stood for a moment of silence to commemorate the eleven victims of the Munich Olympics. Minutes before entering the Knesset’s main hall, Prime Minister Golda Meir and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon had ushered the grieving families into her office. She shook hands with the widows, the bereaved parents, and the fatherless children, offering the customary condolences. Golda’s dark eyes gazed straight at them. “I want to share my plans with you. I’ve decided to pursue each and every one of them. Not one of the people involved in any way will be walking around on this earth for much longer,” she said, pounding the table for emphasis. “We will chase them till the last.” No one said a word. There was no applause. The families were far from congratulatory: they did not ask for, or desire, revenge.
The prime minister spoke from the podium at the front of the Knesset assembly hall. “The actions and ways of the terrorists are continually evolving. It is our duty to prepare ourselves for this type of war, more than we have been to this day—methodically, knowledgeably, decisively, and expansively; this is a dangerous and critical task,” she said. The prime minister went on: “From the blood-drenched history of the Jewish nation, we learn that violence which begins with the murder of Jews, ends with the spread of violence and danger to all people, in all nations.” At the end of her speech, the prime minister addressed the developing parameters of Israeli counterterrorism. “We have no choice,” she said, “but to strike at terrorist organizations wherever we can reach them. That is our obligation to ourselves and to peace. We shall fulfill that obligation undauntedly.” Meir would repeat these phrases on many occasions—they became part of the Israeli national security ethos. An entire generation of Mossad, Shabak, and Military Intelligence officers have been armed and motivated by her words.
The prime minister faced two demands in the ensuing discussion on the Knesset floor. The right-wing opposition, led by Menachem Begin and his Herut Party, demanded a parliamentary committee of inquiry. “The opposition does not accept your announcement today that the government should place the responsibility for investigating the security breach in Munich solely in your hands,” said Begin, who five years later would be prime minister. “Any democratic parliament the world over would put together an inclusive, official committee of inquiry . . . so the entire nation can know what happened; what was done; what was overlooked; whether there was negligence and who was responsible for it. That is our duty.”
Knesset member Shalom Cohen, of the far left, offered this: “It is our duty to ask these questions, and maybe one question more than the others: how could it have happened? . . . Especially when it was so clear that an Israeli delegation at an Olympic Games could be susceptible to this type of attack; when it is known that there are armed maniacs whose goal it is to harm us? It is our duty to tell the story of [the sprinter] Esther Shachmorov, whose mother didn’t want her to compete in international competitions. She’s famous, her mother said, and there are crazy people in this world. There are terrorists who might try and hurt her. She went to the authorities and to the Israeli Sports Commission, where she was promised that her daughter and the other athletes would be kept safe. And then on the day she escorted her daughter to the airport, she saw there was no security at all. Yet they convinced her that everything was under control . . . . Let’s say that out of deference to German sovereignty we were willing to forgo our desire to place our own armed guards on the ground, does that absolve us of the responsibility to check that the Germans put their own men in our stead? Was that ever checked? Now they come and tell us that there were lapses in security, but they should have seen that on the first or second day of comp
etition; ten days went by and nothing was done. No one came to the German authorities and said: ‘Thank you kindly, but you’re not doing your job, so we will do it for you, otherwise we will withdraw our team.’”
The Knesset then took up the subject of Israel’s response to the attack. There was wall-to-wall consensus. Begin demanded that Israel’s war on terror switch gears. “Retaliation no longer suffices. We demand a prolonged, open-ended assault against the murderers and their bases . . . . We must stifle all of their plans and operations, and snuff out the existence of these murderous organizations . . . . We have the might of hand and mind; we must employ them. We need to run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth, to render them fearful, no longer able to initiate violence. If we need a special unit to do this, then now is the time to build it.”
As a longtime opposition leader in the Knesset, Menachem Begin had no idea that such a covert unit already existed. It was called Caesarea. Over the next few years the unit, which operated deep undercover, on neutral and enemy ground alike, would double and triple its budget and its manpower. Priorities were shifting all across the intelligence community and nowhere more so than in the Mossad, where Zamir, as its head, began to personally supervise the matter. The “Munich Revolution,” as one renowned Tzomet division head referred to it, had begun.
17 THE PLAN TAKES SHAPE
JERUSALEM, PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1972, 1100H
Golda Meir looked up from behind a pile of paper at the men entering her office. Brigadier General Yisrael Lior, her military aide, was escorting Pinchas Kopel, the newly retired national chief of police, and Moshe Kashti, former director general of the Defense Ministry. The prime minister knew them both and went straight to the point. “Well, will you take the assignment?” she asked. The men nodded their acceptance. Golda, already in office for three long years, leaned back in her chair and set off on a maudlin monologue. She, who was so personally wounded by the murder of the athletes, was being attacked by virtually all the Knesset parties. “‘Did we have any intelligence? Any prior knowledge?’ they ask. I tell them again and again that neither Zvi [Zamir] nor Military Intelligence had any sense of a pending attack. ‘Why were they sent without a security detail?’” She stopped the lament and motioned them to their chairs. “I’m bearing the burden of all this, it’s me they’re crucifying, and now they’re demanding an official parliamentary commission of inquiry. Why do you think they want that? So it can leak?”
Golda lit a Chesterfield. “Find out what happened over there, and why; interview whomever you want. You can have any documents you need.” She looked over at Brigadier General Lior for approval. He was nodding. “If you run into any problems,” she continued, “Yisrael will straighten them out, but you need to be quick about this. You have two weeks.” The prime minister leaned out of her chair to receive an envelope from Lior. It was thick, and the words TOP SECRET were printed in bold across the front. She handed it to Pinchas Kopel. “Everything is in here. There are three copies of your mission statement. Give one to Mr. Avigdor Bartel and send him my regards as soon as he returns to Israel. The three of you are the official investigative team charged with assessing the security arrangements at the Munich Olympics.”
The Old Lady, head of state and overseer of the Mossad and the Shabak, hoped that an internal investigative committee would block the growing wave of criticism that threatened to wash over her. Government ministers were already bickering and assigning blame for the security lapses, which, under the hot lights of public speculation, began to smell of ripening negligence. The public began to sense a twin failure: unfocused intelligence gathering, and a lack of security for the athletes. Some were even beginning to question the government’s ability to manage the defense establishment during its counterterrorism campaign.
Golda needed a pressure valve, something to divert the stream of newspaper articles and radio reports away from the debate over culpability. The situation called for a great initiative, a measure both profound and severe. The retaliatory strikes, which bore the code name “Minor Offensive,” were a temporary balm at best. They did not represent a fitting reprisal to Munich, and did nothing to help Israel in its war on terrorism. Golda realized that Israel’s response had to be remorseless, had to unequivocally convey the message that, for those involved in terrorism against Israel or Israelis, death would, like the sword of Damocles, hang menacingly over every head.
That week Golda authorized the outline of a new plan to fight the burgeoning Palestinian terrorism. Drafted by Zamir and subsequently complemented by the new advisor to the prime minister on terrorism, Major General (ret.) Aharon Yariv, formerly of Military Intelligence, the plan addressed a number of issues. Chief among them was “prevention”—the elimination of terror operatives who harbored malevolent intentions toward Israel and Israeli citizens. Golda described the objectives succinctly from the podium of the Knesset one week later: “Wherever a plot is being woven, wherever people are planning to murder Jews and Israelis—that is where we need to strike.”
A second, more complex element of the plan related to deterrence. The hope was that a withering series of assassinations would deter terrorists, those assisting them, and those contemplating joining their ranks. In addition, once the new strategy took hold, even the most hardened terrorists, Yariv and Zamir believed, would have to spend a great deal of their time and energy on personal preservation. The message to all terror operatives would be clear: the state of Israel will settle its score with all who have harmed or intend to harm its citizens. Israel had assassinated its enemies before, but now assassination would become a major tool in counterterrorism.
The initial and most obvious candidates were the Black September operatives responsible for Munich. They were to be found and watched until a plan to kill them could be formulated. They would lead the list; as new plots were uncovered, new names would be added. Each mission would come before the prime minister for approval. Although indictments and assassination plans would be frequently discussed with cabinet members, the prime minister alone would ultimately decide the fate of each person.
This is how it worked: A long, internal process would lead to an indictment. When the case was complete, the head of the Mossad, assuming the role of prosecutor, would argue for a guilty verdict and a death sentence; the prime minister, along with members of cabinet, would act as judges. In several instances in the months and years ahead cabinet members and the prime minister would suspend sentencing, demanding further incriminating evidence. These “trials” were top secret; aides were kept in the dark and official records bore no mention of them. Years later, the forum that decided the fate of these men was labeled Committee X by the international media.
Mike Harari, commander of Caesarea, was always present during the pseudo-trials. His staff officers and combatants would construct and carry out the operational plans. Sometimes, after detailing a proposed assassination mission, Zamir and Harari would be given the go-ahead to proceed with the planning of the mission, but not its execution: the bench accepted the prosecution’s case, but withheld sentencing for a later date. Weeks, months, and sometimes years later the head of the Mossad would return to the prime minister with additional operational plans and again request authorization. The prime minister would authorize the plan only when certain that innocent civilians would not be harmed, and that the strategic interests of the state would not be harmed.
It is likely that the word “revenge” is not mentioned anywhere in the archives of government, Mossad, Shabak, and Military Intelligence documents. It was considered improper for a sovereign state to pursue revenge for the blood of the murdered. Yet it motivated, to varying degrees, every officer and official involved, from the prime minister on down.
Golda herself was wary of high-wire assassination plans. In fact, she hesitated before adopting the Zamir-Yariv plan for immediate and uncompromising retaliatory strikes. Shortly before his death twenty years later, Aharon Yari
v spoke with BBC reporter Peter Taylor. “As a woman she was not very exhilarated by the idea, but I felt very strongly about it, very strongly indeed. In the end, I succeeded in convincing her. She relented.”
In May 1972, six months before Zamir and Yariv’s plan was drafted, Prime Minister Meir had given her authorization to kill Ghassan Kanafani, a member of the PFLP—the group that launched the Japanese Red Army attack at Lod Airport. He was an active political figure, a poet, and well-known author. His assassination, for which Israel never took credit, raised a lot of questions. Why kill a noncombatant, a noted writer? Moreover, the hit wasn’t clean: a girl, who was posthumously presented as his niece, was killed along with Kanafani when the explosives attached to the chassis of his car detonated.
Golda was not the type of commander in chief to sift through operational details, asking piercing questions about proposed missions. One thought was always foremost in her mind: what will happen to the “boys” if they were caught on foreign soil? Now that she had agreed to a series of assassinations, she worried that a slipup in Europe would require a lot of difficult answers. Israel’s prestige would be tarnished if it became clear that the Jewish state had stooped to the level of its terrorist adversaries. A sovereign state wasn’t supposed to use the terrorists’ tool—fear—or send hit squads to foreign lands.
Yet, in the post-Munich reality, Golda gave the Mossad more leeway than ever before.
Golda’s predecessors tended not to use murder as a means to achieve political and security ends. Previous prime ministers had authorized assassinations only a few times in the young state’s history, usually to prevent an impending attack. Every now and again an assassination plan was presented to them for approval. Levi Eshkol, the prime minister from 1963 to 1969, flat out refused to authorize such missions. His reasoning reflected sobriety: the tool of assassination is ineffective and may provoke terrorists to respond in kind. Killing would beget killing.
Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response Page 9