Munich Olympics and Black September

"Arab Commando Group Seizes Members of the Israeli Olympic Team at their Quarters at the Munich Olympic Village"

Photo

By: Kurt Strumpf

Date: September 5, 1972

Source: The Associated Press.

About the Photographer: Kurt Strumpf was a photographer for The Associated Press, an international wire service that provides news and photographs to news agencies around the world.

INTRODUCTION

When it occurred, the attack on the Israeli Olympic delegation to the 1972 Summer Olympics was one of the most shocking acts of terrorism ever carried out.

The events began 4:30 a.m. on September 5, 1972 as the Israeli athletes were sleeping in their rooms in the Olympic village in Munich, Germany. Eight members of the Palestinian group Black September, a faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), broke into the village and took nine Israeli athletes hostage. The terrorists later killed the hostages during a series of dramatic events.

In the early moments of the attack, an Israeli weightlifter and a wrestling coach were immediately killed as two other Israelis escaped. The nine remaining athletes were taken hostage, and their captors demanded the release of 234 Palestinians being held in Israel as well as two other Palestinians being held in Germany. The Israelis immediately refused and asked the German government for permission to send a special-forces unit to Germany, but the German police chose to use their own forces to attempt to resolve the crisis.

After the terrorists were granted the right to move along with the hostages to a nearby airport, a German police team began a mission to rescue the hostages. With little or no special-forces training and poor communication and equipment, the German team fired on the terrorists, but failed to kill all of them. Three terrorists remained alive, along with the nine hostages who were still in the two helicopters that had flown them out of the Olympic village.

Just after midnight on September 6, one of the terrorists jumped out of one of the helicopters, threw a grenade onto the hostages, and shot at the four Israelis inside. The five other Israeli athletes in the second helicopter were killed when a gun battle broke out between the terrorists and the German police. By 12:30 a.m., all nine Israeli athletes were dead and three kidnappers were caught alive.

Despite the shock and tragedy of the attack, the decision was made that the 1972 Olympics would be completed after being suspended for the day of September 5, as the crisis unfolded.

On September 9, 1972, the Israeli Air Force bombed PLO facilities in Syria and Lebanon in retaliation for the Munich attack. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1898–1978) also agreed in secret meetings with the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, that Black September members would be targeted wherever in the world they could be found. By 2005, only Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, who claimed to have masterminded the Munich attack, remained alive.

PRIMARY SOURCE

MUNICH OLYMPICS AND BLACK SEPTEMBER

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The television images broadcast from the 1972 Olympics in Munich had a lasting impact on how terrorism would be covered by the international media. This image of the terrorist leaning over the balcony of the Olympic compound was to become one of the most widely known pictures of its day.

As the Olympic Games are typically one of the most watched events in television, the events in Munich in 1972 were recorded by cameras for almost the entire twenty-one hour ordeal—from the time the Israeli athletes were besieged until they were all dead early the next day. The 1972 games were, in fact, the first time that the Olympics were broadcast live.

The central media placement of the Munich terrorist attack has led many to ask the question of what role the media has to play in the minds of the terrorists themselves. Terrorist activity is often intended by its perpetrators to draw attention to a specific issue of interest by disrupting the daily life of intended victims by causing fear. Media attention does, in many ways, help the terrorists achieve their aims. The Black September group clearly understood that the Olympics would be a highly televised event. By choosing Munich as the site to launch the attack, they intended to reach the eyes and ears of millions across the globe. In the United States, the fact that the incident was recorded live directly exposed Americans to the extent of the violence that existed in the Middle East conflict. The Olympics massacre and the images which emerged from it would have a lasting effect on how the West perceived the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In subsequent years, through technological innovation and expanded coverage, the media has been able to provide more extensive and live coverage of terrorist activity as it happens. The attack on the Munich Olympics was therefore perhaps most significant because, through the medium of television, the terrorists succeeded in terrorizing not just those directly affected but the general public watching around the world.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Reeve, Simon. One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation "Wrath of God." New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001.

Periodicals

Web sites

ASEAN Mass Communications Studies and Research Center. "Television, Terrorism and the Making of Incomprehension." <http://www.utcc.ac.th/amsar/about/document3.html> (accessed July 4, 2005).

Council on Foreign Relations. "Terrorism and the Media." <http://cfrterrorism.org/terrorism/media.html> (accessed July 4, 2005).