The Enduring Power of Zionism’s Propaganda Lies
Though they denied it for some years (until I engaged them in lengthy conversations for my book on Arafat), all of Fatah’s leaders had prior knowledge of, and, with the exception of Khalad Hassan, effectively sanctioned, one Black September terror operation – the one that was witnessed by the world at the Munich Olympic Games in September 1972.
After shooting dead one Israeli athlete, BSO (Fatah) terrorists took nine others hostage. The prime purpose of the operation was to draw worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause. It was use of the terror weapon for public relations purposes. The demand of the five terrorists – the release of 200 PLO prisoners in Israel for the lives of the hostages - was a negotiating position. An embarrassed West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, favoured a nonviolent end to the affair. He wanted to exchange the lives of the Israeli hostages for the lives of the Black September terrorists. So did Fatah’s leadership. Abu Iyad, the Fatah and PLO executive with hands-on responsibility for the operation, made an agreement with President Sadat to have the hostages and the terrorists flown to Cairo and for all, hostages and terrorists, to be freed unharmed there. In that event BSO would have failed to get the release of the 200 prisoners in Israel, but it would have been able to claim a victory in the sense that its action had resulted in worldwide publicity for the cause.
In Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir also favoured the nonviolent solution. Her greatest concern was that not one Israeli life be lost. At an emergency cabinet meeting in her official residence, Defence Minister Dayan opposed her. He took the line that they must be prepared to sacrifice the lives of their athletes in order to demonstrate that Israel would never give in to terrorism. He wanted a shoot-out in Germany. The terrorists had to be captured or killed at whatever cost; and he threatened to resign if he did not get his way. Reluctantly, to avoid a government crisis, Golda gave him the license he was demanding.
Israel then went through the motions of agreeing to Sadat’s proposal for a nonviolent solution, and the terrorists and their hostages were transferred in two helicopters to Furstenfeldbruck military airport where a Boeing 727 was waiting with lights out to fly them all to Cairo. Apparently. When one of the terrorists went to inspect the darkened and empty plane (there was no crew on board, it was going nowhere), the floodlights were turned on and five West German marksmen, supported by police and special forces armed with submachine guns, took aim. And then it all went badly wrong. When the shooting started one of the terrorists threw a grenade into one of the helicopters. When it was all over the five terrorists and the nine Israeli hostages were dead. Dayan had had his way. (It was a great public relations coup for the Zionist state. As embedded in Western public recall long after the horrific event, and still today, Palestinian terrorists had set out to slaughter Israeli Olympic athletes. As the brief summary above indicates, that was Zionist propaganda nonsense, which the mainstream Western media still peddles to this day).
In associating themselves with the Munich operation Fatah’s leaders had been trying to perform an act of crisis management. Because support for the terror option was pretty much universal in the rank and file of the liberation movement, they had taken the view that in order to beat their own terrorists, they had first of all to be seen to be joining them. Though he personally opposed the Munich operation, Khalad Hassan put it this way:
“We had to associate ourselves with what was happening in order to give ourselves the credibility to take control of the situation and then turn off what you call the terror tap. And it is for this act of crisis management that Arafat, myself and others in the leadership who were against the use of the terror weapon are called terrorists”.
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